meet the latest class of the skilled alliance construction gateway. funded by city and county tax dollars this is an innovative five-week training program to turn the unemployable into the employed. >> this is a big deal to you? >> yes, very big deal. this is the beginning of the rest of my life. >> i'm excited even though it is -- really intense. >> reporter: the target is individuals over the age of 18 who ought to be entering the work force but who have little hope of doing so because they dropped out of school or wound up in jail or had some other problem. sean gomez, for example, had been in and out of prison for robbery by the time he was 25. >> there was no work. he was not existing. for me people like myself. >> follow the basics and repeat basics and everything else falls in place. >> reporter: then he ran into sylvester would recruits students for the construction gateway program. scouring homeless shelt terse,