Non-profit helps ex-prisoners with paid apprenticeships

World Half Full

22 hours ago

4 min read

BUSINESS

In a converted machine shop in southeastern San Diego, California, men who’ve spent decades in prison are learning critical trade skills just weeks out of incarceration thanks to a non-profit machining business.

Rise Up Industries has spent more than a decade helping men gain machinist qualifications via a paid apprenticeship program with therapy and case management built in.

Rise Up fills contracts for aerospace and medical device parts, automotive components, camera and plumping hardware, BMX parts, and fishing lures.

The US infamously has more incarcerated people per capita than any other country in the developed world and makes it very difficult for someone with a felony conviction to find work.

And when they are released from prison, roughly two-thirds re-offend within three years, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rise Up’s own tracking shows only 3% of its program graduates re-offend.

Komisi Savaiinaea, who served more than two decades in prison and who recently graduated from the apprenticeship program, admits, “I was very intimidated and skeptical about the whole thing. I’d never had any experience with machining, it had been many years since I went to school. I’m not too savvy with technology, so I was a bit fearful of the whole thing. But after touring through the shop and speaking with the members who were on the machines, it really helped put it into perspective — they had no prior machining experience either.”

All that was required was a crash course in trigonometry courtesy of tutors on the machining floor. “If these gentlemen on the floor can get it, you know, I believe in myself, I think I can get it as well,” Savaiinaea says. He adds the only other opportunity he had was working on construction sites.

Most program participants are formerly gang-involved, such as current apprentice Anthony Walkens. In 1998, Walkens was found guilty of gang-related homicide and sentenced to 55 years to life. He did 27 years in correctionals throughout California. But he says in his last ten years, a change had come over him, and he became eligible for parole last year. His experience entering Rise Up’s apprenticeship program was remarkably similar to Savaiinaea’s.

“When I first came through the door, I was overwhelmed, I thought I had bit off more than I could chew. But the welcome I got here from people like Komisi, it reassured me that I would be able to do this,” says Walkens. “When Komisi first started, he had this same experience, and coming from the same scenario as me, it started being more comfortable.”

Savaiinaea has now taken on the role of supervisor, which he sees as providing “a consistent source of encouragement and guidance for current participants. It’s more gentle, they can relate to it better. So it allows me to continue my learning and be of service to others.”

Rise Up’s Executive Director Jonathan Yackley says, “San Diego has a strong advanced manufacturing sector and a significant need for skilled workers, so CNC [computer numerical control] machining became the central employment pathway in our program.”

As well as the training, tutoring and case management, Rise Up offers therapy and clinical help as needed. For instance, Savaiinaea is a cancer survivor and was unable to work in 2023 and 2024. He’s also availed himself of therapy to support his role as a husband of more than 30 years. “I’ve been with her through dysfunction, addiction, and it looks different coming home in a responsible state of mind in a pro-social setting,” he adds.

“Over the years, we have learned that technical training alone is not enough,” says Yackley. “Someone can leave incarceration with a certificate and still face the same isolation, trauma, instability and lack of opportunity that contributed to incarceration in the first place.”

“Sustainable change happens when demanding career training is combined with behavioural health care, case management, education and a community in which people know they belong — Komisi is a powerful example,” he says. “The leadership skills he once used in prison now help him supervise a manufacturing team, encourage new participants and serve his community.”

“It’s really a beautiful place,” says Walkens, “kind of like a family setting.”

Yackley notes “this impact reflects a team committed to excellence and a community willing to stand in the gap believing in someone’s dignity until they believe it for themselves.”

In financial year 2025, all of Rise Up’s graduates secured employment, with median post-exit wages of US$25/hour, rising to US$30 after six months. Rise Up’s Leadership Academy, its gang prevention program for vulnerable youth, completed its first full year in 2025, providing daily afterschool and summer programming for 54 fifth- and sixth-graders in City Heights and all students were promoted to the next grade level, with reading scores improving by an average of 1.5 grade levels.

And the future is looking bright. A US$1.8 million, three-year contract with the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development has allowed Rise Up’s Re-entry Program to expand by 66%.

TOP, MIDDLE Rise Up’s machine shop floor

PHOTOS Rise Up Industries