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Oakland Station Covers Community by Steven Middlestein
Students at the Cypress Mandela Training Center learn about all aspects of 'green construction' including hazmat remediation. photo: courtesy KTOP
AMIDST THE HUB-BUB IN THE OAKLAND
media of late, the City’s award-winning government television station, KTOP-TV Channel 10, sometimes slips through the cracks.
But it has been hard at work, recently profiling an innovative East Oakland youth center for Digital Arts & Culinary Arts. Called DACA, it has a unique way to help young people find employment in what is rapidly becoming a foody and art center, and KTOP reflected their creativity in their piece.
"Blue Prints for Life", KTOP's latest documentary, is also worth noting, given its quality and focus on West Oaklanders as they go through an intense 16-week "Pre-apprenticeship" program.
“The way [the instructors] spoke to me was kind of intimidating. It was very on dot, very serious," Bill Desmond, a 19 year-old high school dropout, said in the film.
"I just felt like they were gonna get me somewhere, but I didn’t know if they were gonna get me on the ground and work me to death or get me out the door to a career.”
Here the students go solar. photo: courtesy KTOP
A community-based group, which emerged in 1993 in response to the damage and subsequent rebuilding during and after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Cypress Mandela Training Center (CMTC) is dedicated to providing green construction training as well as life skills and employment assistance.
It was rewarding for the film crew, too, noted Ramiro Segura, who co-directed and helped edit, "to create a documentary about a nonprofit institution that helps young people in Oakland and gives them a second chance in life."
Shot over almost 17 weeks, KTOP’s crew immersed themselves into the lives of the students who hail from all walks of life, and followed them through various course work, be it construction, math, life skills, earth justice, solar panel installation and hazmat as well as one hour-a-day of exercise.
“It was a lot of work to see this project to the end. We had 70 hours of footage that we cut to one hour," Co-Director Meadow Holmes told me by email recently. "A lot of stories ended up on the cutting room floor."
"But I’m very proud of the ones we were able to tell and pleased to be a part of a project that shows the positive side of Oakland.”
They also visited a few students at their homes and closely followed four students to understand their journeys to rebuilding their lives outside of CMTC.
But at the heart of an institution that emerged from the devastation wreaked on Oakland by the earthquake is construction. photo: courtesy KTOP
Sadly, some students struggle with various form of addiction; others have been incarcerated; and one lives in a group home. But they all are looking for a new "blue print" to change their lives and better themselves.
One excellent candidate for success was 30 year-old Dorothy Morris, who was raised by her grandmother, another was Alberto Ruiz, a middle aged Cuban immigrant, and a third was 27 year-old Erik Valenzuela, who desperately wanted to provide a better life for his unborn child.
Do they have the discipline to make it through this intense 16-week program? Will Cypress Mandela Training Center be their answer? Tune in to KTOP-TV Channel 10 to find out. "Blue Prints for Life " shows next on Dec. 13th at 7:00 pm.
It premiered on November 7th at the center in West Oakland where it was well received by those in attendance, including former and present students and CMTC's board members. One of the latter said that, after watching the hour-long show, she had learned more about the program than in 20 years on the board.
Currently, the KTOP crew is wrapping production on a feature-length documentary entitled “Brighter than Blight” about an art installation by the artist Ise Lyfe in a condemned East Oakland housing project, and beginning a studio series on local independent filmmakers. It will involve Q&A in the studio followed by the filmmakers’ films.