The program was made possible with a $200,000 gift from the late Joan Hastings, who wanted to bring several groups together.
Dalisa Saldana of Chicopee welds her jewelry box made in the Hampshire College Lemelson Center shop. Saldana, a student at the Care Center in Holyoke, was one of about 10 who went to the campus for a two week program.AMHERST – When Dalisa Saldana lived in Puerto Rico she used to turn on the power for the equipment in her grandparents’ machine shop and run away.
“I was scared,” the 18-year-old said. Not anymore. Now the Chicopee mother wielded a MIG welder like a magic wand as she melded the edges of her metal jewelry box in the shop at the Lemelson Center at Hampshire College recently.
Saldana was one of about 10 teens from the Care Center in Holyoke who recently spent two weeks at the college learning about farming at the college’s farm center and design, welding and the use of tools at the Lemelson Center.
The program that brought her and her friends from Holyoke to Amherst is new and is evolving but it is the gift of Joan Hastings. Hastings, who was president and founder of the Fiber Art Foundation and Fiber Art Center and helped create the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, died in November.
Hastings was always interested in helping others, said longtime friend Sarah Buttenwieser. When she lived in the Boston area, she worked for the Justice Resource Institute, and co-founded Women’s Enterprises, a nonprofit agency which supported women trying to enter traditional blue-collar trades.
In September, she learned she had cancer. She started thinking about what she could do as part of her legacy.
Hastings told Buttenwieser, “I could get good news and I could have 20 more years,” but she also knew it could go the other way. And, she told Buttenwieser, “I’d rather be up in the middle of the night thinking about” how to help others.
She cared deeply about the Care Center and the Treehouse project, an Easthampton community assisting foster children and the families who care for them, Buttenwieser said. She was also supported the Enchanted Theater so she donated $200,000 to create a way to connect these groups and also spawn something that would last.
The program will keep going somehow, Buttenwieser said. There’s already a plan for a professor to teach a class at the Care Center in the fall. Students from Hampshire have been working at the Care Center so a connection has been established.
Both schools offer an alternative way of teaching, said Jude Kallock, a transition counselor with the Care Center, which provides an alternative education program for pregnant teens and those who are raising children, who have dropped out of high school.
Kallock, who’s a Hampshire alum, said “these guys are having the time of their life.”
At the farm, they learned to milk cows, pick and grind wheat, pluck eggs from chickens, and churn butter. They made pancakes with their ingredients.
Samantha Ortiz of Chicopee shows the candle holder she made in the Hampshire College Lemelson Center shop. Ortiz, a student at the Care Center in Holyoke, was one of about 10 who went to the campus for a two week program.With the farm, that was hands-on learning, Kallock said, and they could understand what they were doing even if they didn’t have the English words. What they’ve learned “it would have taken them light years” in another environment.
The welding, too, has been remarkable. “These kids have a lot of fear in their life,” Kallock said. “When you start welding, you learn what you are capable of.”
At the Lemelson Center, they learned about the design process and how to use tools like drill presses and band saws and welding torches to create something that would open and close.
“I never used none of the tools before,” said Joan Zayas, who lives in Holyoke and is the mother of a 2-year-old. “This is like you get to create something. You can do it by yourself. I love it,” she said.
“I’ve learned a lot,” said Samantha Ortiz, of Chicopee. “I never thought I’d experience what I did. Welding has been the best.”
She said she’d like to be a corrections officer but thinks “welding will probably help” in her life. She’d like to do more. The 18-year-old was making a metal candle holder for her mother, with whom she lives. Her mother loves candles and her 15-month-old daughter tries to touch them.
Saldana was working on a jewelry box that opens on two sides. “I came up with the idea,” she said. “I love to do crafts and I’m working with metal. It’s more interesting (than other materials).” She wants to go on to college, but she’d love to get a job welding as well.
During the program, the teens spent afternoons in the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where they talked about what they did in the mornings working with members of the Enchanted Circle Theater in Holyoke.
Foster children who live in Easthampton as part of the Treehouse community will be involved in other projects next week.
Buttenwieser said on the first day when the farm program began, the sun came out and they thought of Hastings. “She would so thrilled. It gave her pleasure to make those connections (between the different groups.) She was an amazing woman, she cared about doing things for others.”