The Justice Education Center Inc

For over 48 years, The Justice Education Center's mission has been to improve the lives of children, youth, and adults through increasing community safety, reducing crime and violence, and providing educational and wellness opportunities for Connecticut’s children, youth, and families.

The Center’s core belief is that these efforts cannot be waged by systems alone. They require long-term working partnerships between state and municipal governments and the communities they serve.

Membership of The Center’s Board of Directors reflects this belief and includes leaders within Connecticut’s education, juvenile, criminal justice, and mental health systems, business, 

The Justice Education Center responds to needs identified by state, municipal, and community leaders through targeted investments and innovative programming.

Career Pathways Technology Collaborative

The Career Pathways Technology Collaborative, a national award-winning program, provides pre-apprenticeship credentialed technology training to at-risk, over-age and under-credited 16-24 year olds who are attending traditional and alternative high schools, adult education programs as well as youth who are no longer attending school.   

Career Pathways recognized that encouraging a student’s aptitudes and interests will lead to the successful completion of high school, apprenticeships, potential future study in two and four year institutions or immediate entry into long-term sustainable careers.

• Career Pathways enables students to acquire credits toward their high school diploma or GED, obtain entry or competitive level employment or seek further technology certifications through union or community college programs.

• The Collaborative focuses on contextualized learning - encouraging students to make the important connections between numeracy and literacy requirements and their careers. In some instances, college credits are also awarded while completing high school requirements.

• Complementing the technology courses, certifications in OSHA 10, First Aid/CPR, and Serv-Safe Allergen are offered.

• Career Pathways emphasizes social and emotional learning, understanding workplace culture and team-building skills through its ECHO personal development program.

• Safety is an essential component of the Career Pathways Tech Collaborative. Mandatory training lessons are held in the beginning of each semester to address safety procedures prior to the use of any school equipment or tools.

Whether a young adult or adult learner, developing social and emotional life skills for the workplace are instrumental to success. Providing students with job shadowing and internship experiences are essential components in exposing them to business and industry cultures and standards. In addition to the rigorous training in each of the technical fields, there are essential classes which students must take to complete their educational experience.

Inspire Girls

Inspire is a statewide town and city sports, arts, and wellness program for girls in elementary, middle school and high school with an emphasis on at-risk communities. Inspire programming is offered throughout the year, holding clinics, summer camps and special events in collaboration with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. A recent congressional earmark will enable Inspire to expand its offerings to include boys and opportunities to collaborate with a select number of other states.

Now more than ever, it is imperative to get girls up, moving and socializing with others. 13% of girls ages 10-17 are obese. During the pandemic, the level of mental health issues among children and youth has increased significantly due to social isolation and the lack of physical activities.

Inspire is a statewide inter-town and city basketball and wellness program for young girls in elementary and middle school.  Inspire programming will be offered throughout the year, holding clinics, summer camps and special events in cooperation with UConn Womens Basketball Alumnae and the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. 

Its mission is to promote girls’ mental and physical health and wellness, self-worth and independence; encourage them to be sensitive to and care for others; and maximize their feelings of self-confidence through their hard work and successes both on and off the court, through basketball, other sports, cooperative games, arts and exploratory field trips.  While weekday clinics will be held in the girls’ individual towns, weekends will bring the girls together – not to play against one another – but to play as members of the same teams within their geographic areas.

Connecticut girls will learn the importance and value of their physical and mental health and wellness through basketball, cooperative and fun games, exercise and free play along with age-appropriate strength and endurance training, yoga, nutrition and stress-reducing activities. Exciting fun-filled field trips (ECHO), an innovative approach to learning, will provide the basic building blocks for Inspire.  ECHO stands for Empathy, Character, Hope and Opportunity and focuses on strengthening life skills, fostering resiliency and reinforcing positive behaviors. It will provide coaches with engagement strategies that convey positive and consistent messages of empathy, respect, honesty, caring and fairness.  Special recognition events with peers and families is an integral part of Inspire’s programming. 

For more information on their current initiatives, please visit: www.justiceeducationcenter.org/initiatives/