Lowell organization UTEC helps young adults in bad situations with job and life skills
LOWELL - An organization in Lowell is helping young adults in bad situations by teaching them life and job skills.
UTEC, which stands for United Teen Equality Center, started in 1999 as safe space for kids and has grown into an outreach initiative to help young people incarcerated or involved in gang violence.
The program's workshops help teach important skills to those struggling to find a path forward.
"First and foremost, UTEC's focus is providing opportunities to young adults who have barriers to employment and other areas of life," said UTEC's Sr. Director of Social Enterprises Ricardo Febles. "Learning how to be in the workplace, how to work as a team, how to show up on time, how to self-manage and to self-motivate. These are all things that we are striving to teach."
UTEC has workshops such as culinary arts, community recycling and woodworking to teach a skill but it starts with more than that.
'"It's less teaching and more relationship building. We come in and we work on those communication skills and then we start introducing them to what's in the shop and what opportunities that lie in front of them," Woodworking Educator Matt Morin told WBZ-TV.
Those relationships then build a trust and, from there, the teachers and students develop a partnership.
"Every time we come together in the morning we check in and we see what's going on in your life. I have a new baby girl at home and a lot of them have that same experience happening with them. So we try to find those commonalities and connect," Morin said.
And because it's hard to get a job if you have been previously incarcerated, at UTEC they can provide a path.
"We have people who know what we do in the community and they partner with us through different areas of our work and often we see our young adults going to those places first," Febles told WBZ.
For more information, visit their website.