Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Valencia.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Aaron. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
At 19 years old, I was on a pretty bad trajectory and decided to change my life. I went to rehab, got clean and began working as a union painter. I always had an interest in classic cars, so I decided to learn everything I could about them, including how to restore, maintain, and customize them. Eventually, I started my own custom car restoration business.
In 2011, I volunteered in the soup kitchen at the Grace Resource Center in Lancaster, California. After that experience, I left the U.S. and traveled to southeast Asia, through Chang Rai Thailand and, later, Lao Cambodia, where I taught English at a mountain school, helped construct a school for orphans, and assisted a non-profit to provide a freshwater supply and construct a playground at a school for abandoned families. When I returned to the U.S., I came up with an idea to combine two things I really love: working on cars and helping kids.
In 2014 I found an abandoned 1931 Ford Roadster, and with the help of car club friends, and kids in the neighborhood around my shop we restored it. We took the Roadster to the 2014 Ventura Nationals Car Show where we sold posters of the car that came with a ticket to win it. We raised over $40,000 and donated the proceeds to two local nonprofits that work with homeless children.
The next year I formed the Lost Angels Children’s Project, a non-profit, to teach classic car restoration in an afterschool program. Each year, we build a different classic car and give it away in a sweepstakes at the Ventura Nationals. Proceeds from ticket sales now go directly back into the program.
LACP has grown and moved into a brand new facility. Our programs have expanded to include (1) the classic car restoration afterschool program for high school students, (2) a manufacturing training and social enterprise program for young adults (18-25 years old), and (3) a t-shirt silk screening social enterprise program run by youth. LACP has won recognition from CNN Hero, and been featured in the press for our approach to fighting poverty, homelessness and unemployment through youth engagement in industrial arts.
Has it been a smooth road?
It’s always a struggle to find funding to keep our programs running and our kids interested and enthusiastic. It was a big step for us to move into our current facility. But even that has gotten pretty small considering the expansion of our programs, and we are always on the lookout for ways to create more awesome experiences for the youth in Lancaster.
At the start of COVID 19, we had to cancel all hands-on learning programs. However, we recognized that people in our community were clearly suffering. Since April, LACP has distributed over 10,000 meals as well as essential supplies (toilet paper, soap, detergent, masks, bleach, etc.) to hundreds of local families. In May, LACP partnered with fellow CNN Hero, Stan Hays of Operation Barbeque Relief, to deliver 2,000 meals each week to local families in mobile home communities hit hardest during the pandemic.
In July, we resumed our training program for young adults with COVID 19 safety precautions in place including social distancing, wearing masks, regular deep cleanings of the facilities and equipment, and daily temperature and symptom screening.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lost Angels Children’s Project story. Tell us more about the business.
I used to be known for restoring and customizing classic automobiles. Now, I think I’m probably best known for teaching kids how to do that. Since 2014, I’ve been teaching at risk 13-18 year olds how to weld, fabricate, work on engines, transmissions, electrical systems, tires, bodywork and basically do everything involved in restoring classic cars.
Our afterschool program includes educational field trips for the kids and special events like our Haunted House and Friday Night “Get Downs”, which are small scale car shows for the local community. Now we’ve also started new social enterprise programs: the T-shirt silk-screening business, and the Good Life Manufacturing vocational training program. We train and actually hire transition-age youth to work for us and hopefully springboard them into careers. Four of our recent graduates were hired by Northrup Grumman.
I’m proud of everything we are working on, and I’m very enthusiastic about our vocational training program. Our vocational interns are really going after it, and being a part of their excitement and drive makes this an awesome place to come to work every day.
What sets us apart is that we are offering hard skills training, real-life work experience -some of which is grueling and designed to test our kids’ limits. What you get at the end of the day is a hardened, experienced labor force that knows how to put their noses to the grindstone and get the job done.
We approach child homelessness at its roots, where it starts, which I think is neglected children who are not given the tools and skills they need to make it. We give them a leg up by teaching them life skills, providing mentorship and experiences many of them would not otherwise have. Our kids are often in foster care, or have been in contact with the juvenile justice system. When they come here we try to teach them manners, how to work, be part of a team, and then hopefully if they stick with us, we’ll get them employed, either with us, or with businesses in the community. We really want to set them off on career paths in skilled positions. We train them to weld, fabricate and work in a metal shop where we build some great custom furniture pieces for customers in the community. Our biggest struggle right now is to develop this social enterprise vocational training program into a viable, competitive business that can sustain itself, create jobs for young adults in Lancaster, and build a workforce that is competent and demands excellence of itself and for its customers. I feel like we’re on the right path.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
In the next decade, nonprofits are going to be feeling the consequences of the pandemic and economic shutdown. I’ve heard some frightening statistics. Our goal is to keep plugging away and try to safely, effectively and efficiently work on problems of youth homelessness and poverty.
Contact Info:
- Address: 45059 Trevor Ave Lancaster, CA 93534
- Website: lostangelscp.org
- Phone: 6614063681
- Email: [email protected]
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