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For seven months, the closed Quik-Trip on West Florissant Avenue has served as a charred reminder of the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
Soon, the remains of the store, which became ground zero for protests after the black teen’s shooting by a white Ferguson police officer, will be demolished. In its place will rise a center to train young black men on how to get jobs, keep them and even lobby for promotions.
The new building will be an expansion of the job training and education efforts of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis (St. Louis, MO).
On Friday, the Urban League said the center would be “an important extension of its services in North County to further the League’s mission of empowering communities and changing lives.”
The center will “expand the Urban League’s work to broaden access to education/job training, employment and economic self-reliance for residents of the St. Louis metro area,” the League said in a news release.
A source involved in the negotiations said QuikTrip would level the store that was looted and burned Aug. 10, the day after Brown was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, who has since resigned from the police department. The convenience store chain also will remove the underground gas tanks. Several donors will provide funding for the Urban League to build a “community empowerment center” on the site.
The center will house the new Save Our Sons program, which landed $1.2 million in donations from St. Louis area companies in the wake of the turmoil in Ferguson. The goal is to take 500 young men, jobless or underemployed, from north St. Louis County and give them a month’s training in how to land a job and keep it. From there, the men will be matched with jobs at area companies. Putting 500 men through the program is expected to take several years.
To read the full article, please visit: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/urban-league-to-open-a-new-center-in-ferguson-on/article_0811b89c-5fab-5c80-9bd2-351a37023eda.html
