Job Training & Education

Planning a life worth celebrating

Unemployed at-risk youth have many barriers to success, but lack of a life plan may be the most discouraging. CFLC’s Youth Opportunity Centers in Hemet, Lake Elsinore, and Rubidoux identify career aptitudes for young job seekers, teach interview skills and customer service, arrange paid internships and employment in the business community and connect them to higher education. An experienced Youth Development Specialist tracks each participant's progress, guiding, encouraging, coaching (and sometimes parenting) them for a full two years.
Our new 14,000 square foot Rubidoux Youth Opportunity Center, with a hard wood basketball court, recording studio and computer lab, opened in February 2009. Together, the three centers employed over 967 youth this year. The Summer Work Experience Program and the Subsidized Time-Limited Employment Program has been particularly successful, employing 600 youth in just a few months, many of them as young as 14.

Certificate Training in customer service, computer skills, work etiquette, auto technology, photography, film and recording technology and many other fields helped our youth qualify for, and keep those jobs. Many earned their GED and more than 50 enrolled in college this year.

CFLC Job Training youth also volunteered for food drives, city beautification, children's day camps, charity fundraising events and many other public services. But it’s not all work; beach and snow trips, theme parks, sporting events, picnics, movies, and holiday celebrations showed them how to have good clean fun.