Starting From Square One With “Square One”
By Max Maldonado
Located on the second floor of the Mandel Public Library in West Palm Beach, people of varying ages type away at computers, each clack bringing them closer to their goal: bettering their educations.
These individuals are taking part in the library’s service known as the “Square One Initiative: Reconnecting Disconnected Young Adults,” a program that began in January 2017, that helps young adult who are “disconnected” from opportunities that could connect them to potential job options. The program is on a walk-in basis and offers free educational resources to young adults, and works around their schedules to bring them closest to their goals.
Trevon Permenter, 19, was never able to obtain his high school diploma. After finishing the 10th grade, he was forced to drop out of school to support his family in their businesses, All-In Remodeling, and Anc Impeccable Renovations. After a three year hiatus, Permenter returned to his studies but was not making the progress that he wanted. Then his step-sister recommended that he try “Square One.”
“I came from not knowing how to get it done, not having a quiet place to study or nobody to help me at all really,” said Permenter. “Then when I came here I found not only seclusion where I can come here and study and have a peace of mind but I found somebody that would actually help me study and help me move forward even faster than I thought I was capable of doing.”
This program was the brainchild of E-Government librarian, Janet Norton, and adult services and programming manager, Janice Collins, who felt that education took priority in life no matter a person’s age or situation. The idea of helping a person restart their educational development is what lent itself to the program’s name: “Square One”.
“We came up with a need that we saw in our community from the experience we had dealing with people every day out here in the library,” said Norton, “We decided to target that 15 to 29-year-old group that were disconnected and to create a space where a dedicated person can help them get connected to things that they need in order to build a better future.”
The duo wrote, refined and proposed the program to the West Palm Beach City Commission, before finally being awarded an $85K grant in the December of 2016. These funds transformed the second floor of the Mandel Library into a space tailored to adult learning with computers boasting up to date software programs, a driving simulator for people seeking to earn their driver’s license as well as offering hosted workshops and events.
“It’s wonderful to go from seeing something as a concept, and then actually see it physically manifest itself,” said Norton.
The program was originally developed to aid young adults to gain access to a multitude of free, career building services that varied from learning basic coding, how to write a résumé and even how to fill out an EXCEL spreadsheet. Workshops are free to the public as well as participants of “Square One” and can range from learning how to use a 3D printer, the basics of how to build and maintain a respectful online presence, or Adulting 101 which teaches young men and women about the challenges that come with the transition into adulthood.
In order to attract people to the program, The Mandel Library uses events such as the Square One Social, which is aimed to bring in and educate new recruits on the services that the program provides. This event also doubles as an open mic that encourages participants of the program and the general public to come and speak their minds through either poetry, song or just talk about their life experiences and their aspirations.
As the popularity of the program grew so did the number of participants. As of January 2018, 170 individuals have utilized the plethora of resources that the “Square One” program offers.
When “Square One” was officially opened in 2017, the library also hired new staff to help in the studies of the incoming participants. Among the newly employed was William Hollis, 37, who was brought on as an associate librarian, and who quickly became the face of the “Square One” program.
The library also added a spacious study room, and spanning across the right side wall is a series of pictures arranged in a neat line, dubbed by Hollis as the “Wall of Fame”. Enclosed in silver frames some people brandish their new drivers’ licenses or simply shake Hollis’s hand, all of them feature varying sized smiles of triumph, all of them are success stories of “Square One.”
Hollis said he can relate to the participants of “Square One”, having just recently obtained his bachelor’s in supervision and management from Broward College in 2016. Before and after graduating high school, Hollis never took an interest in education, over the years he worked in a variety of jobs that ranged from an officer in the Navy, a security guard to a substitute teacher at a local middle school.
“Education got me from the room filled with screaming seventh graders to in here,” said Hollis. “Education has made a difference in my life and I just want to share that with everyone.”
With the increasing number of participants and their successes, the “Square One” program added another service to their already large roster, the chance for an individual to earn an accredited high school diploma through a scholarship-based program known as the Career Online High School. These scholarships, five in total, are funded through the Library Services and Technologies Act, a state program that distributes grants and resources to libraries through Institute of Museum and Library Service, and are each worth $5,000 making them highly competitive.
“The Career Online High School is offered to anyone 19 years or over, and are for those people where returning to their traditional high school is not an option,” said Hollis. In order to qualify for the grant, an individual must complete a two-week prerequisite course before entering the next stage of the process.
Careful measures have also been put in place to make sure that participants are dedicating enough time to the program, such as an interview with Hollis and a 30-day monitoring session. Currently, no one has been awarded a scholarship as of yet.
Permenter, however, is one participant of “Square One” that is hard at work to obtain one of these elusive scholarships and is currently studying in hopes to earn his diploma so that he will be able to take the test to earn a roofing and general contracting license so that he can assist his family in their businesses and move onto “the next level.”
“When I do get my roofing license I can help my dad’s company because he’ll be able to use my license to get more job’s and bring in more money,” said Permenter. “And when I get my general contracting license, my stepdad will be able to get more jobs and bring in more money. So not only would I be helping them, but I’ll be helping myself also.”
Permenter’s ultimate goal is to later earn his real-estate license so that he may achieve his goal of becoming a real-estate investor and perhaps be another face on Hollis’s “Wall of Fame.”
For the staff of the Mandel Public Library, the impact that “Square One” has on benefitting people’s lives has been prevalent, and for Janet Norton, she holds a positive outlook on the future.
“I would love to see the kid that I saw come in today and come back to me in 10 years and say, ‘Hey, this is what I am doing and it was because of the help from Square One.’”
