Image of Mario

About

About Kids Making It

Kids Making It is a national award-winning program unique in its strengths-based approach to empower our at-risk youth to transcend their challenges and grow into responsible, employed, law-abiding citizens.

Founded in 1994 as a volunteer effort, and with a pilot program at Jervay in 1997, KMI has been working full-time with Wilmington’s youth since 2000, teaching woodworking in a strong mentoring environment and instilling patience, pride, perseverance, confidence, teamwork and self-esteem while building character through consistent modeling of the golden rule, community service projects and imparting the truth of actions and consequences through the woodworking process.

KMI is a long-term program with many of our kids returning year-after-year. Many started with us when they were in elementary school, building go-carts with handtools. They are now teenagers, and we have grown with them to offer the skills of a power tools shop. At our shop and retail store on Water Street, they build what they can imagine, and sell many of their products — earning 100% of the profits on all their sales. As they’ve grown, so has their skill level, and their social skills as well. The go-carts have given way to handcrafted bowls and pens, and custom orders from their customers, and the retail shop is a wonderful learning atmosphere where these kids are immersed into the mainstream of society, as they sell their products to the public. They are now moving toward high-school graduation, and we are moving with them to help them successfully transition from school into either the workplace or higher education.

In our 2008 expansion*, we are adding a social worker to our staff to provide more intensive counseling and support work for not only our kids but their families as well, in addition to another instructor. With the City Council’s help from the current year’s budget, we are buying two modern, state of the art pieces of woodworking equipment that interface computer technology with woodworking - vocational training on this equipment is in demand in today’s job place, and KMI will provide this training to our older youth. We want to take over the other half of the ground level at the Jacobi Warehouse, to add another shop space, to serve more kids and hold more classes. Finally, we will be providing vocational counseling to assist kids transitioning into the work place, to ensure that they become gainfully employed instead of hanging on the streets.

Jeanne Denny, faculty member at the UNCW Department of Social Work, has been consulting with us to better serve our kids because of her belief that KMI’s unique cutting-edge, strengths-based entrepreneurial programming offers these kids their best chance of success — as we work with them as unique individuals, tapping into their own personal strengths to lead them to self-sufficiency, instead of just teaching them to comply with rules and regulations while in the program.

*All proceeds from our first annual Making Magic fundraiser, to be held at City Stage, Level 5 on July 19th, 2008, will be dedicated to helping to fund our expansion effort. Please see the NewsFlash on our website homepage for more details — kidsmakingit.org.

To learn more about how you can help, please e-mail us @ info@kidsmakingit.org