Job Corps celebrated its 50th anniversary as an employer. For half a century, Job Corps has been providing one of the largest career-training networks aimed at low-income youths. By giving no-cost technical and academic training to young people ages 16 to 24, Job Corps helps guide youth towards a better path for their future careers.

The program originated as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty.” Its road forward has not been without challenges — in recent years, Job Corps has dealt with everything from mismanagement, which led to budget problems, to low completion rates at several campuses.

Today, there are 135 Job Corps Centers located throughout the U.S., and the program, overall, has close to a 75% graduation rate. Since the program’s inception, 2.7 million young people have been a part of it.

“The students and their stories, their ability to transform — despite their circumstance, and situations they might have come from their ability to push through that and persevere — to me more closely mimics the story of the American Dream,” said Chris Feutrier, the new center director for Job Corps in Trapper Creek — South of Darby — in an interview with Ravalli Republic.

Trapper Creek has seen 15,000 young people throughout the years, and boasts an 85% graduation rate, and offers everything from GED programs to vocational training in the culinary arts. Since sales leaders that focus on their own careers to the detriment of everything else are rarely good for companies, Job Corps candidates — who are part of programs that encourage relying on others and creating a strong network — are a good bet.

Currently, the oldest graduates in the program are about 60 years old. Their stories — and what many of them have accomplished — continue to give hope to younger generations. Judge Sergio A. Guitierrez, age 60, is a Job Corps graduate. Guitierrez was born in Mexico and emigrated with his family to America. Once there, his mother’s mental illness ended up breaking their family apart. Guitierrez drifted through life, becoming “something of a hoodlum” as he describes it, until he enrolled in the Glide, Oregon Job Corp Center.

“Job Corps saved my life,” said Guitierrez in an interview with the Washington Post, saying that his GED from Job Corps was a new start in his life. And today, he resides as chief judge of the Idaho state Court of Appeals.