Program Description
Getting Down to Business is an inter-departmental collaboration between CREC Community Education and Student Services, developing work readiness skills in Hartford’s most at-risk population. Students at Hartford’s Juvenile Detention Center, who are residents of Hartford, ages 14-16, are eligible to participate in this popular vocational training program. Students gain academic, social, and workplace skills through a 25 lesson job skills training program.

When students have successfully completed their classroom training and portfolio, they receive a stipend and are eligible to participate in a Hartford based internship with selected businesses. Program staff engages students at the time of their incarceration and continues working with them and their families once the child is released from detention and transitions back to home and their feeder school.

Students who initially enroll because of the monetary incentives find themselves walking away with much more than a paycheck. Here is what a few had to say: "Before the job, I didn’t think that I could work with people due to my anger. Now I know that it is okay and that the job is much more important than being angry at someone".

"This program taught me so many things about getting a job like writing a resume, how to do an interview, but mostly it kept me out of trouble and that is what I need."

"CREC means so much to me. CREC changed my whole perspective about work. Before CREC I was so unconfident about work, I thought only on negative things about work. I never really convinced myself to even think about working. Now thanks to CREC I’m a confident, enthusiastic, responsible, hardworking, polite teenager and that’s more than I could ever ask for."

"When I made my resume I didn’t think that I had anything worthwhile to put on it. After it was finished I couldn’t believe that all of the things that were on it were really about me."