Skills for today.
Hope for what comes next.
Guided by the Grain: Foundations brings hands-on woodworking and supportive mentoring to young people in secure detention facilities.
We meet twice a week in small crews of 5 to 7. Participants practice woodworking, problem-solving, communication, and planning while building relationships with supportive adult mentors, and crews finish real builds: this year they designed a 12x12 shed and are building it, with two participants leading each session as Project Manager and Site Manager.
Every session builds real, industry-transferable skills: safe tool use, reading plans, measuring, teamwork, and leading a crew. Those are skills young people can name on a job application or resume, and they leave with a clearer sense of their strengths and more possibilities for their future.
What Foundations supports
- Practical woodworking, skilled trades, and tool skills
- Confidence and creative problem-solving
- Self-awareness and future planning
- Positive relationships with supportive mentors
- Greater hope for what comes next
Launched in January, already building.
Small group workshops cover career exploration, applications and resumes, personal budgets, and life skills, and our mentorship and career support continue after participants leave the program.
Learning through hands-on work
Positive Youth Development
Deeply Ingrained uses the Five Cs of Positive Youth Development—Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring—to help young people build strengths that extend beyond the woodshop.
Interested in bringing Foundations
to your organization?
We partner with youth-serving organizations to shape programming around their setting, goals, and the young people they serve.