REIGNITE HOPE

ReIGNITE Hope is a 501c3 non-profit offering life-changing career training and certifications as American Welding Society (AWS) welders for over 14+ years. We train participants for a career in welding, gets them certified in the welding trade, and assist them with job placement at no cost to them. We are transforming families and communities with high-paying jobs, dignity, inspiration, and hope.

We are making a significant contribution to the workforce around Southern California, the United States, and the world. Our students have the power to change their lives for the better, gained from the support and skills they attain in our hands-on classroom and welding center paid for through free scholarships to all students.

We have graduated more than 1,500 students with a 100% welding certification rate for all graduates. We partner with many unions and companies seeking AWS-certified welders for their workforces including SpaceX, Honeywell, Siemens, local unions, and many more.

Our students are primarily BIPOC or bilingual minorities. Many of them and the non-minority students have been veterans, homeless, struggled with chemical dependencies, generationally poor, former gang members, ex-offenders, women, single parents, graduating teens struggling with traditional learning styles, and persons who cannot afford to attend community colleges, adult schools, or trade schools.

Our headquarters is located in Gardena, CA, and we have three Mobile Training Centers that go to other locations in Los Angeles, Orange, and Sacramento Counties to train students. Additionally, we have existing training facilities in Pennsylvania, Texas, Brazil, and the Philippines. We believe our winning strategy to change the lives can work in any environment, any city.

Our school is led by an AWS Certified Instructor and Inspector, Steve Bunyard. We began training the homeless on Skid Row in 2011. Over the past 14+ years, we've certified 1,500+ students through AWS. In the past year, we have nearly doubled our training capacity with the construction and operation of our three Mobile Training Centers which each have 8 welding stations each inside outfitted 18-wheeler trailers to reach further into disadvantaged communities.

ReIGNITE Hope seeks to train and certify more welders worldwide to help fill in the gap for AWS's estimated 300,000 deficit of welders by 2024. We plan to do so by training and certifying welders in our Gardena facility, in our existing Mobile Training Centers, and by building more outfitted 18-wheeler trailer Mobile Training Centers over the next 2-5 years to train welders around the country.

Each Mobile Training Center can train 100 students every year. Our Mobile Training Centers have taught underprivileged residents of the Harbor Hills Housing Project in the Rolling Hills Covenant Church parking lot. It has also been used to start our ReIGNITE Hope Orange County and to teach classes to at-risk students at West Chaffey High School in Montclair, San Bernardino County. The Mobile Training Centers have also helped us reach and train overflow students from our Gardena facility and our waiting list of applicants. Our three Mobile Training Centers will each teach four classes next year and every year after that.

We are currently seeking funds to retrofit 4 new Mobile Training Centers in the next 2-5 years. Building a Mobile Training Center is a one-time cost of $300,000 to construct, including materials and labor, plus $100,000 a year to operate.

The work ReIGNITE Hope has already done over the past 10+ years and continues to do year after year is proof that our unique, faith-based training is transforming their lives in the United States and around the world, and will continue to do, year after year. We are reigniting hope in the world, one life at a time.