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But we do have guys that have been in the system and when they get out, a lot of times they, they feel like I've already messed up. Now I've got a record and nobody's gonna hire me. And I'm just gonna go back to what I was doing, because that was easy. And that was normal.
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I sat down with Eric Evans and Tim Queener with 4:13 Strong, a nonprofit organization in Nashville, Tennessee. We talked about helping marginalized communities with programs designed specifically for men. Their slogan is building better men to build a better Nashville. Seeing that most of their connections revolve around something in the construction industry. They are spot on with their target audience. Tim gives us a bit of history behind the programs.
(01:27):
What we're trying to do is to help young men to find alternatives and opportunities. And a long time ago, uh, the program was started under the Y M C a actually enter a different name called Y build. And then in 2015, we became our own nonprofit, um, because our board wanted to keep the program going. And we just feel it's important to show these guys that there is something other than what you've been doing. And if you feel like I've done too much, um, my record is too bad or whatever may be that I can't do something and be successful. And so I think the, the biggest thing we try to do is show opportunity to the young men that we work with and help them understand that you can, um, bring yourself out of whatever mess maybe you've gotten into, or even if you've never gotten into a mess, you can avoid a mess and you can move forward and progress and really change generations within your family.
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So, Tim, in a nutshell, these guys are looking for a way to be successful, but some may have gotten into trouble or they don't have a particular role model with the advice that they need to follow.
(02:38):
Yeah. We get guys that have been in jail and in trouble a little bit, a little bit. Um, not all of our guys have had, um, issues with the law, so to speak, but we do have guys that have been in the system and when they get out, a lot of times they, they feel like I've already messed up. Now I've got a record and nobody's gonna hire me. And I'm just gonna go back to what I was doing because that was easy and that was normal. And so in a sense, we try to change normal and help these guys understand that you can have a different normal than what you had and really, you know, change your life. Yeah. I would also say that, you know, um, just to be able to provide that opportunity, you know, just because you miss up, um, once or twice or however many times, um, doesn't, it shouldn't eliminate you from being able to make a, a living, uh, for yourself legally mm-hmm .
(03:37):
And I think a lot of times, a lot of people put, put this cap on, on people and say, Nope, you messed up. That's it it's over with go over here and don't come out. Well, there is a, a space for that. I believe that, you know, you paid for what you've done, but what do you do afterwards? Okay, I've done that. I've, I've done my time and I've messed up. I realized that, but I really just want to be able to provide. And so what should that look like? And I think four 13 strong helps start the creation of the painting of, of their life. And, uh, so that's what we do.
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I thought it was interesting when Eric mentioned that they put a cap on themselves, a glass ceiling in a way as if they're permanently stained and can't achieve any better in life. And that's not the case at all. If you get the advice you need, so guys tell me how exactly do you help these fellows? Is there some sort of guidance you can get maybe a how-to manual provided?
(04:44):
Yeah. An another, um, analogy we like to use is that everybody needs a blueprint. And since we are mostly, you know, pretty much almost all construction oriented with our training and with our job placement, we really want the guys understand if you don't have a blueprint, if you don't know what the steps are to get you from where you are now to the next step, and then the next, then you're not gonna have as much success and it won't come as quickly. And so to develop and build a blueprint of what they want their life to look like is something that, you know, we believe that's very important.
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I snooped around on your website at 413strong.org and found a list of steps required. Can you tell me more about that?
(05:30):
They must complete a savings of $1500 and they must purchase a cash car of four months of continuous work in order to graduate from our program. We don't really be too much on those things. You know, we, we believe that it's important. You gotta get a car and that means you gotta get your license. Then they also mean that you gotta get some insurance. And so we, we don't want guys to be relying on someone else to take him to and from work every single day, because we've noticed over the years, Tim and I, that guys that say, yeah, I got a ride. I'm good. Well, that ride that he has is his girlfriend's car or that's his mother's car, or he's strictly relying on one of those O other people to take him to him from. So we ask the guys to make sure that they save at least 1500 inside of their emergency fund and also purchase that cash card and, uh, continued to work those things they have to do.
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Do you work on mindset skills and motivational training too?
(06:44):
So in order to get into the program, you have to do what we call mental toughness week. Okay. Mental toughness week is a, is, is very physical. It's a lot of working out the first half of the day is something that Tim would talk about. But that, that, that first half of the day is a lot of working out. Uh, it's a lot of trying to see if they would quit on themself. And then we try to coach them up because one of the things that we try to tell these guys is that when you are on a job site and it's cold outside, you're not gonna feel like doing anything. You're on a job site and it's already 90 degrees and it's only nine o'clock in the morning. You're not gonna want to do that. So you have to take yourself somewhat mentally. So that's really why we call it mental toughness. And that's, that can be very challenging for a lot of our guys. And then we have the evening part of, of that, of mental toughness week. And that's consists of Tim taking the guys for the most part through, uh, team building exercises and trying to see how well they work together with pimple, uh, people they may not know or people that they may may know, uh, just to see who's a leader and who is a follower. There's nothing wrong with being either one, but we want to see who you are as well.
(08:13):
That makes sense. It's similar to any resistance training. You have to be able to work a full shift, be focused, pay attention, but what about the construction skills they need to know to get hired?
(08:26):
What I teach is, uh, we, all of our guys go through OSHA 10 and we do the OSHA 10. That is the, uh, for construction. So that's a safety certification. That's a nationally recognized certification. So all the guys will go through that. The 10 stands for 10 hours. So there's 10 hours of seat time they have to go through. But that after that we do NCCER Core, which is another national certification. It is, we do core, which is the beginning, like an intro to construction. So we hand tools, power tools, blueprint, reading, um, communication skills, kind of a wide variety of things in that curriculum. And that basically takes us from technically week three after they moved in. Cause we do team building the first week and then we start classes our second week and we take them through that for the rest of the timeline, which takes roughly about the next month-ish to get through all of that.
(09:21):
And so they'll get two certifications. And the NCCER Core, if a young man is assign to going into electrical plumbing, HVAC, whatever it may be, then he can't this beginning point of core is their kind of prerequisite to do, um, the rest of that. So if they want to be becoming an apprentice in electric electrical plumbing or whatever, that's the beginning phase of it. So because of our timelines and the amount of groups you work with, uh, we do core first and then when a guy moves into that other field and he has that option with that company that that company says, yep, he's been a good worker for last few months. We're gonna put him in school. And then they put him in their course for whatever that may be in that apprenticeship field.
(10:05):
Do they ever get a chance to see those jobs in action before they're pushed out of the nest, so to speak? I know that my husband's business has worked with you guys in the past. What did you actually do?
(10:17):
Uh, we've been to rail yard, um, studios before, and that was a lot of fun. Seeing all the cool, different things that are built out of, you know, railroad ties and, um, steel rails and stuff. I, you never think pool tables, you know, pool table made out of all that, which you're like how in the world does anybody even think of that? But it's very cool for them to see. There are multiple options out there. There's not just four things that you can do in construction. There's 30, 40, 50 different fields you can go into. And so we take guys on site visits, we just went with JE Dunn on a massive site. It's I think it's about almost a million and a half square feet of multiple things they're doing down by the river over in. Well, I guess it's still called Germantown, not much Germantown left in Germantown, but they're really keeping a lot of the original stuff and building some new stuff down there.
(11:07):
And our guys were able to see a wide variety of fields of construction. So we, we want them to have that experience of knowing this is what it's like on a construction site. And we're only out there for about an hour, hour and a half. So you're walking on gravel, you're going up and down scaffolds. You are, um, in areas that can be smell. It can be hot, it can be cold. Um, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of machinery. There's a lot of noise to give the guys a gauge, you know, and usually we'll come out of a site visit. You'll have a couple of guys go, okay, I wanna do that. And then there's almost always one guy Eric, that every week he changes his mind on what he wants to do every time, every time, because most guys don't, they just don't know because they've never been around him before. So, and that's, that's real because most of the guys that come into the program, um, you ask them, what do you want to do? Construction construction well, what does that mean? You know, construction, but they have no clue what, what it is that they're asking for. So once they see it, they, for a good portion of them, they get amazed. And then, um, uh, the next week they're amazed again. so it's pretty cool to see it. Yeah.
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In the mornings. When the guys are fresh into our program for the first thing we do, we do yoga so there's that? And my downward dog is no good is it down? Yeah, it is down. You stay down. Yeah, but we do, we do some yoga. We start with a spiritual class. Uh, basically we, we talk about the Bible. We go, uh, we go through the, from Genesis all the way through pretty, not all of the books, but we go through, uh, several books in the Bible and that's on Monday through Thursday. That's what we do. And then we do financial literacy also. That's every single day, Monday through Thursday. And then on Mondays and Wednesdays, we do what we call work life. And that is an opportunity for us to teach the guys. What, what does it mean to work? What is work and what is work life? Why should you work? Why should you work? And how do you conduct yourself at work? What do you, how do you handle yourself when you have a disagreement with your employer? What what's proper, uh, to wear on the job site? All of these type of things is something that we, we discuss with these guys.
(14:11):
It sounds like you cover all the bases from behaviors to job skills, to focus and attention, and even what clothing to wear. So what about social skills and communication? Do you get together beyond the classes?
(14:26):
On Monday evenings, we have mentoring sessions where there are a bunch of men that come over and they just hang out with the guys. And then also, um, Thursday evenings, uh, people sign up to bring, bring food over for the guys and just have dinner, normal agenda, just hang out and just eat dinner. And on Friday nights we do what we called, um, game night. And that's where a bunch of different people in the community. They just come over and just play space dominoes, shoe basketball, you name it, ping pong here in there. Little ping pong, Lil pool. Uh, and just the object is to just hang out, to get to know the guys and the guys get to, uh, know some different people.
(15:17):
Tim, I wanna bring up what you said earlier about some of these guys wanting to try out different things all the time. Not really settling on one or two things, but being undecided. I know these guys are young, like 18 to 30 and need some experience under their belts. But from what I've seen in my coaching business is that these guys are the ones that may become the best leaders who know a little bit about everything. They probably ought to run their own businesses, but maybe their confidence in being successful to be able to make a good living, isn't a hundred percent there. What do you say to them when they can't decide what they wanna do?
(15:59):
This is the area I think that you will be successful in. And if you don't like it, don't quit your job. Don't, don't, don't get fired from your job, but let's just say in four months you gave it a real true shot. And if you don't like it, then we'll discuss putting you somewhere else. And at that moment, you know, that gives a guy an opportunity to really give a job a, a chance, uh, because he may find out that, you know what? I didn't think I would like being an electrician, but I love this now. And then you would start to see the light bulb, come on. Maybe I can do my own little side hustle. Mm-hmm, , here's another way for me to make some money and now they're hooked. So yeah, we, we see guys that, that they can't make a decision, but once they have the conversation with Tim and Tim advisees them on what he thinks and what he sees, um, it usually works.
(17:07):
The guys went on to explain that they don't give explicit directions on which jobs to take, unless they can't decide. Then they'll get them started somewhere in the industry. Once they're out there doing field work, such as H V a C work they'll encounter electricians, maybe even concrete work, they can go back to 4:13 strong and look for another placement. If they want to branch out
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with 81% of former inmates ending up back behind bars. 4:13 wants to break the cycle together with these men. This program appears to be the bridge that they need to get into something sustainable. The graduation success rate is between 40 and 45%. Some of the men may need more time, more confidence. Building the program typically takes six months to complete. It's paid for by donors, through fundraisers and a few small grants.
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One thing I found interesting is that the guys live on their campus at the old Tennessee prep school. They have six buildings, they've got classrooms and offices, and they have learned over time that they needed safe housing support for their students. You can visit their website at 413strong.org to look at their events that they put on throughout the year, such as golf tournaments, a fishing tournament, and even a casino themed party, 4:13, the name comes from Philippians 4:13. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." They do welcome people of all faiths. So please get signed up. If you know, someone spread the word and visit the website.
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I've got one last question for you. What is your hope for the future of 4:13 strong and how you help these men navigate the world in a better way?
(20:32):
I wish that people would tell their sons or tell their neighbors, Hey, this may be another opportunity for you to make some money, some legal money and get a career. You know, our program is not just for, uh, guys who have, have been in trouble before every the facts is that every young person that walks out the door are at risk. And so, uh, I hope that I wish that people, if you know, your son is not the college bound type of young men, Hey, put a plug in this there, let him know, Hey, there's this program called 4:13 may want to look into it. You know, it really could change its life. So that's the one thing that I would say that, uh, sticks out of my head, providing the opportunity for more young men, uh, no matter where they come from.
(21:31):
Thank you for listening today. My name is Sally Hendrick. Be sure to visit our website for show notes and more information on how you can inspire others. If you would like to contribute content to our magazine, please apply on our website at shoutyourcause.com.
