The Prince’s Rebuilding Communities Programme is a nine-month programme of applied study which offers building craftsmen the opportunity to enhance and advance their design knowledge and experience in traditional and sustainable building crafts.

This programme provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to gain experience in traditional and sustainable building crafts.

“When I travel around the country meeting people from every sort of background, it is rare that I find skilled craftsmen or women who are unhappy in their work. They usually derive a real sense of satisfaction and, above all, pride from what they do.”
-HRH The Prince of Wales, speaking at SkillCity, Manchester, England, November 2002

The Prince’s Rebuilding Communities Programme, in association with PRC’s Operation Comeback program, offers talented, enthusiastic and committed trades-people the opportunity to enhance their vocational skills with the design knowledge, work experience and coaching necessary to succeed in a career in the traditional building sector.

LEARN MORE and apply by visiting our website.

The New Orleans Museum of Art’s annual Art in Bloom exhibit included a lovely display from PRC’s Operation Comeback! This year’s theme was “Going Green,” was reflected in the display with recycled decorative pieces from salvaged houses.

This program has helped me in ways I cannot imagine. It let me find my true passion, which is art, and it shocked me. It also made me a better person and helped me appreciate my city surroundings and myself. This program is the best thing that ever happened to me and I am over-excited that I am a part of it. Thanks to everyone involved”.
– Malcolm Harding, Carpenter

A year ago England’s Prince of Wales Foundation conceived of a program to “deliver the skills urgently needed to regenerate and rebuild New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast, preserve the unique architecture of the region as well as ultimately helping the populations most affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: the urban poor.”

The intensive five month course began in October 2009 with 21 apprentices from the New Orleans area and focused on issues particular to the region. The chosen students were already experienced in their respective fields and were given the opportunity to hone their skills and work beside master craftsmen, first here in New Orleans before travelling to England to see and work on historic sites there.

Apprentice J.R. Portman created a blog to highlight their experiences in London. Please take a moment to visit the site and view the dozens of amazing photos of the city, apprentices and their work.

Prince Charles at the graduation ceremony

The PRC would like to thank the other program partners for their involvement, without whom the project could not have come to fruition:
Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment
Surdna Foundation
Joseph C. Canizaro (Columbus Properties L.P.)
Louisiana Recovery Authority
Louisiana Workforce Commission
Louisiana Carpenters Regional Council Apprenticeship & Training Center
Delgado Community College
Louisiana Technical College

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is submitting an application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for $100 million of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 funds—a program of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Together with a coalition of preservation and community development organizations, developers, and financial institutions, NTHP will work to stabilize and redevelop historic neighborhoods and properties impacted by the foreclosure and housing crisis. In New Orleans, PRC’s Operation Comeback will be working in partnership with the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative (NONDC) and other partner organizations to rehabilitate properties in Central City.

We urge PRC supporters to submit comment on NTHP’s proposal to HUD. Please review the following web site and visit the comment form to submit comments by midnight, July 13, 2009.

Additional information on the New Orleans partnership:

NONDC is a non-profit community organizing, community planning and development organization, focused on revitalizing the Central City neighborhood. For the last ten years NONDC has concentrated on increasing the production of quality affordable housing and asset-building for low-income families through homeownership. Nationally recognized for its efforts, NONDC partnered with the National Vacant Properties Campaign and proposed changes to the City’s code enforcement, tax-adjudicated and blighted process to more efficiently return properties to productive use. To date, NONDC has been a partner in the transformation of at least 25 vacant and decaying properties into quality affordable housing accessible to existing residents of the Central City neighborhood. NONDC and its partners, Operation Comeback, Providence Community Housing, Neighborhood Housing Services, Gulf Coast Housing Partnership, Sustainable Environmental Enterprises, and the Goodwork Network, seek $3.5 million for the acquisition and rehabilitation of 30 properties to convert them to affordable homeownership opportunities.

For additional information on the Neighborhood Stabilization Proposal and for information on partnerships in other communities, visit NTHP’s website.

Please take a moment to check into our other resources, like our Flickr and Facebook sites, or join up for our Yahoo mailgroup!