Elizabeth Offibea has been involved in nearly every program offered by the Worcester Youth Center. And she’s brought her friends with her.

She calls herself an overachiever who is “always trying to do stuff.” In seventh grade, she attended Teen Circle programming twice a week at Sullivan Middle School, as the Youth Center was closed for repairs after the damaging August 2021 flood. The Center’s Director of Creative Leadership and Organizational Innovation Nydia Colón came to the school building and was open to new ideas, she said.

In the program, Elizabeth said, “I was expected to learn more about myself and what I wanted. We talked about so much, it was a really good year.”

Back in the Chandler Street building in 2022, Elizabeth particularly enjoyed the Healthy Lifestyles drug prevention program, which included gardening. While not an outdoorsy type, she found that planting tomatoes, cauliflower, peppers, scallions and watermelon offered a way to make friends, learn teamwork and relieve some stress.

Her third year, she continued in the Work Readiness program, which led to an internship at the Ecotarium running table-top activities with other interns. “They gave us space to be creative,” she said. “We would ask visitors, ‘Would you like to make something?’” Buckets of multi-colored slime resulted. “It was a 10 to 5 job, but it never felt that way,” she said.

Youth Center memories include Friday cookouts, an amazing trip to Six Flags and a field trip to a trampoline park with an arcade and bumper cars.

“This is a great place to learn other things not in school,” she said. “Especially once you get to know people here.”