Youth Help Build ​“Escape” Youth Center

Months before it opens, The ​“Escape” already got a group of teens busy.

Ten New Haven high-schoolers were busy getting a former Orchard Street church building ready Wednesday for its upcoming opening as a youth drop-in and activity center as well as a homeless shelter for teens. at the site of the Orchard Street drop-in and activity center and is set to be completed in the coming months.

For five weeks during the summer, the 10 high-schoolers are working on the site to get the shelter up and running. These students participated in the ​“Career Pathways TECH Collaborative” program, a initiative started by the city in the fall of 2014 that provides at-risk teens with after-school vocational training at the Eli Whitney Technical School. (Read more about the program here.) The idea is to steer them away from trouble with skills that can land them good jobs. They are now putting those hands-on skills to good use.

“This functions as a sort of a lab, they learned and they get to do it here now,” said William MacMullen, the architectural capital projects coordinator for the city’s engineering department. ​“They do it until they get it right.”

This is the students’ second week at the construction site. So far, they have already built an entire wall separating the front entrance from the senior entrance and a greeting window for the center.

The students work at the center from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Career Pathways program coordinator Laura Whitacre said. Their backgrounds range across a variety of fields.

Angell Santana, for example, just graduated from Wilbur Cross High School. He studied plumbing during his last year of school with the Career Pathways program.

“The skills I know now, I wouldn’t without the Eli program,” he said, pointing out all the tools in his belt that he now knew the name for and how to properly use.

David Stephenson, a Co-Op Arts and Humanities High School graduate, was in the carpentry program. Stephenson noted how the program helped him with various skills: measuring, using hand tools, as well as developing time management techniques to get tasks done effectively.

“I’m sure I’m still being educated, even though it feels like I’m already in the trade,” Stephenson said. 

“We’re very happy to be here,” recent Hillhouse High School graduate Jahazeil Barr said. ​“We break the project into smaller parts and work as a team to complete them.”

At the completion of the five weeks, the program directors plan to help students acquire their driver’s licenses, update their resumes with their summer experiences and help find them jobs.

“The Escape is not complete yet, but these kids are getting so much out of this place that it’s already sort of a youth center,” New Haven Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett said.

Bartlett noted that the city could have hired a contractor to do the entire construction job on the Escape, but instead chose to break the project down into smaller parts to hire multiple minority business and youth workers.

According to MacMullen, the project is also phased so that the level of expertise required grows as the project progresses. That way, students learn and further develop their skills as they go.

This is the students’ second week at the construction site. So far, they have already built an entire wall separating the front entrance from the senior entrance and a greeting window for the center.

Bartlett said the kids participating in the Career Pathways program are often students that were not doing particularly well at school, or that often times were not even showing up to school. The program, he said, helps these students to both learn a practical trade as well as improve their performance at school.

“The students can’t go to an after-school activity if they don’t go to school,” he said. ​“So this helps increase their attendance rate, and with the next step: providing them will hands-on training after school.”