Building homes, neighborhoods, skills

Canton, Ohio — Working on the YouthBuild USA program is the favorite part of Felicia Melvin's job.

“I love YouthBuild,” said Melvin, communications specialist at Saint-Gobain North America, a major building products company whose operations include Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in Solon, Ohio. “It's always fun to come out and work side-by-side with the students and get involved. We always say they end up teaching us things every time that we work with them.”

It's easy to see why the project is so rewarding. On April 27, more than a dozen high school age students from Canton gathered in the city's Vassar Park neighborhood for a kind of pep rally to celebrate the latest YouthBuild project.

There was music, cheers and student-led tours of a building that until recently had been abandoned for at least a dozen years — not counting families of raccoons and squirrels that had taken over the two-story home.

Through YouthBuild USA's Green Initiatives program, young adults learn construction and job skills while earning their high school diplomas or GED. Saint-Gobain has supported the program since 2010, with green home renovation projects in four communities where the company has operations: Philadelphia; Worcester, Mass.; Schenectady, N.Y.; and Canton.

The partnership calls on the company to provide donated energy-efficient building materials, technical expertise and volunteer support.

The first priority on the Canton home was the roof, since water had been leaking all the way into the basement. With assistance from a local contractor, the YouthBuild workers replaced the roof, changing the direction of the gables to improve the both the appearance and the energy efficiency of the home. They also relocated the kitchen and the stairs, and stripped the interior to the studs.

Now comes the important work, to rebuild the home. Saint-Gobain workers and Canton youth from Project Rebuild are working side-by-side on the project, and they're planning to use a wide range of donated plastic building products from Saint-Gobain. The company's brands include CertainTeed Corp. siding and pipe, which is the No. 6 company on Plastics News' ranking of North American pipe, profile and tubing extruders.

When they're finished, sometime in the summer of 2017, the team hopes to have a home that will be energy-efficient and no longer a blight in the neighborhood.

“Anytime we can fill in a house, it's like fixing a smile with a missing tooth,” said Canton Mayor Thomas Bernabei, in remarks at the event.

Architect Hallie Bowie of New Leaf Home Design in Akron, Ohio, said the design and selection of the building materials is aimed at qualifying the home for LEED platinum certification.

Bowie is aware of the debate about the sustainability of plastic construction products. She said that, when viewed from a lifecycle perspective, plastics offer advantages that will allow the home renovation to achieve the LEED platinum designation.

“There are so many advantages, when you look at the energy that will be saved over the life of the building,” she said.

Brady Davis, a 22-year-old who is working on the project, hopes that the experience will help him find a career in home construction. He talked enthusiastically about building materials and his new skills, which included rebuilding the third floor.

“Just the hands-on,” Davis said. “It's pretty fun.”

Melvin said in addition to preparing young people for jobs in manufacturing or construction, being involved in YouthBuild USA allows Saint-Gobain to get involved in local communities, stabilizing neighborhoods — and educating the next generation of construction workers and contracts about its building products.

“Hopefully they'll start to use our products and be advocates for the company. That's our goal,” she said.