The Malden Teen Enrichment Center, (MTEC) is a place where students in high school can go to socialize, eat meals provided by the workers and get tutoring and help with school and homework.
"Our name is the Malden Teen Enrichment Center, and we love being a place where kids can feel safe and comfortable coming in and hanging out, but we really want to push the emphasis on that enrichment part,” said Jacob Mullin-Bernstein, who has been working at the MTEC since 2019. Mullin-Bernstein mentioned how the MTEC community wants to emphasize the importance of the “enrichment” part of the name “MTEC”. “Balancing a checkbook, simple stuff like cooking, sewing, [are] really helpful things that they used to have at the school” stated Mullin-Bernstein.
Jay Ortiz, Youth Activities leader at the Malden Teen Enrichment Center, contributes to the weekly events that the MTEC hosts. “Usually each week we try our best to get meals going every single day. In accordance with that, we tend to have a bunch of games going on, whether that's PlayStation, Xbox, ping pong, pool, and we just started adding in an arts and crafts program, which includes wood burning and currently we're doing a scarecrow contest because it's October, we just want to fit the theme.”
Everyday, students can come to MTEC and get a meal and interact with the community by participating in games like video game consoles and more hands-on activities like arts and crafts or physical activities like badminton, MMA/Boxing and the MTEC is in progress of installing a gym upstairs. “We're gonna be adding in a gym upstairs, which will be open currently Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We don't have a current time for it, but it'll be open for roughly two to three hours, which anyone can use” claimed Ortiz, who has a background in martial arts.
The MTEC (commonly referred to as the “teen center”) recently faced a move from across the street from Malden High School to a farther location. “Since we moved to this building and then right after we moved to this building, COVID happened and everything shut down."
"It's been a process of getting our name back out there and getting our faces back out there so that everybody knows where the Malden Teen Enrichment Center is and what we do and like who we are as the people who represent the teen center," he noted
Sheena Lapia Pappas, a worker at MTEC, elaborated on the move to different buildings. “When we ended up having to move out of our last building, and we moved here, it opened up space and then as Covid hit, we had to reinvent ourselves and figure out new programs and new things to do,” claimed Lapia Pappas.
MTEC has been growing their reputation and spreading information about who they are, what they do, and how beneficial they are for the community. One way they did this was by going to 8th graders all around the district and inputting information about the MTEC and when they can start coming to visit. “Right before the eighth grade graduation, we go out to each class and we talk to them about what the teen center is and the day they graduate they can apply for our program. All they [have to] do is fill out that signup sheet." The process, Lapia Pappas pushed, truly is that easy: "They come in, they bring it in and they're all set and right then there they can become an MTEC member up until they graduate high school.”
"It's been a process of getting our name back out there so that everyone knows what we do at MTEC and who we are as the people who represent it."
-Jay Ortiz
Through adversity and struggle, from transitions to one location to another, and the pandemic, the MTEC and all of its workers held hope and created a truly amazing impact to our city. If any teen needs a place to relax, socialize and on top of that get some good food to eat, the MTEC is the place to go.
