Ready to Work: Workforce and housing program breaks ground in Englewood

BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

By this time next year, an old roo ng company building on South Windermere Street in Englewood will be a vibrant home, workplace and resource center helping people nd their way out of homelessness. Elected o cials and community leaders from Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan and other areas of Arapahoe County gathered on June 2 for the groundbreaking ceremony of the third location of Ready to Work, a workforce training and housing program run by the organization

Bridge House.

With funding from many community partners, including Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan, Arapahoe County and donor foundationsthe new location will house about 48 individuals, Bridge House CEO Melissa Green said.

“ e most incredible part of opening up this house is we’re gonna have roughly 150 beds in the Ready to Work community,” she said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

When individuals enter Ready to Work, which currently operates out of Boulder and Aurora, they live in a private bedroom with shared dormitory-style bathrooms, Green said. is year’s theme for the challenge is “the water nexus,” which inspired seventh- and eight-graders Rachel Leatherman, Jessie Miller, Alie Rodina and Nate Villier to focus on the South Platte River.

On their rst day, participants are employed by one of the program’s social enterprises, either landscaping or the culinary program, which o ers catering and other food services.

In addition, trainees receive personalized support services including recovery groups, job readiness classes, nancial management guidance, career mentoring and on-site medical and dental care.

Each year, students at Mackintosh Academy Littleton create projects for the World A airs Challenge, a global competition focused on creating solutions to address the United Nations sustainable development goals.

“We’ve all interacted with the South Platte in our lifetime, and it’s pretty near to where we live,” Miller, who lives in Lone Tree, said. “It was just something that we could easily connect with, and that would also matter.”

Making storm drains educational

When the students were doing their preliminary research on the river, they learned that a signi cant amount of pollution in the river comes from untreated stormwater.

SEE STORMWATER, P13