DUBLIN, Ga. — Tim Chatman, the new Director of Safety for Dublin City Schools and previous Dublin Mayor Phil Best created a program called "Transform Dublin." Its central focus is workforce development in the city.
Rochelle White is a mother of five. She had her first child in high school but never graduated.
"I tell everybody, 'If you want to succeed in life, education is the key. You got to want to do it,'" White said.
She's a nursing assistant now and working to get her GED through Transform Dublin.
"Transform me and transforming your mind to be better and to do better," White said.
It's a part of the city's Transformer House. Tim Chatman developed the imitative in 2015 as Dublin's police chief.
"We dealt with every issue you can imagine. We never turned anyone away," Chatman said.
The program provides educational resources like mentoring, job training, GED prep, and financial literacy classes to all ages.
Dublin's former Mayor Phil Best got involved in the project, too. He says Transform Dublin is more focused on job placement. They work directly with industry employers to find out what they need from candidates.
"We want to get that curriculum and use our volunteer teachers and help teach them that so that we can give them a productive employee," Best said.
Louis Smith Jr. went to college but didn't finish because he had to take care of his children. He has worked at a manufacturing plant, then as a forklift driver, but in 2016, he spent some time in jail, and after that, realized he needed to make a change.
"I'm tired of this rollercoaster life. I'm up this year -- the first of the year, everything starts off good. Next thing you know, I fall hard again," Smith Jr said.
Transform Dublin helped Louis get a job as a company driver, and he now works as an independent contractor. He worked at an air-conditioning company at night and went to truck driving school during the day to get his commercial driver's license.
"You got to have so many hours on the road, but, hey, here I am -- I got it. I was the first one to ever get a job there like that," Smith Jr said.
Chatman says he created the program to give people more opportunities and a more enriching life.
"If one community thrives, it will help the next community thrive as well, and it should be passed on and passed on," Chatman said.
Chatman says the vision for the future is to have a larger building so they can have several different classes going on at one time.