After decades of successful business and community work, Scott Flores now offers apprenticeships so that young Latinos pursuing technical and vocational careers will find it easier to get a job.
For slightly more than 20 years, Flores has been CEO of Die Cut Technologies in Northglenn, a Denver suburb, where he employs 22 people, most of them disabled.
Upon learning some time ago that a young man with a certain disability was looking for a job but couldn't find one because companies had no one to supervise him, Flores hired him and then struck a deal with the Easter Seals charity to supervise him.
That supervisor soon became a recruiter and, since then, Die Cut Technologies, founded in 1961 by Flores' father and dedicated to producing industrial parts, adapted his factory to the needs of his disabled employees.
Flores, a former president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of metro Denver, was on the board of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, where he focused on studying "the high social cost" of young people who, lacking the studies to get a decent job, depend on social programs and public aid.
"Anybody who doesn't finish high school is twice as likely to need free medical assistance and have run-ins with the law," Flores said.
Due to his experience of adapting his factory to employees' needs and not the other way around, and his genuine wish to help young people, in 2009 Flores began to analyze the possibilities of educating youths in a business context, but with academically acceptable certifications and degrees.
By late 2014, that project was transformed into a new non-profit called The Master's Apprentice, whose goal was to "teach our pre-apprentices the basic knowledge they need to enter the labor force and help them obtain the certifications that employers require."
"It's something we have to do in order to help the next generation, because these young people are our future," Flores told Efe.
The organization, supervised by Flores, works with young people between ages 18-24, who are paid $150 per week to attend a 12-week course. When they graduate, they receive a $500 grant to enroll in a formal vocational studies program like plumbing, electricity, carpentry, blacksmithing, heating and air conditioning.
"Recently (Jan. 29) we graduated our first group of six young people. One was Omar, 22, whose teachers told him not to bother going to college. He had been working in a hamburger restaurant for four years when he came to us," Flores said.
"We soon discovered he had great potential - he was outstanding in math and had a great work ethic. Now he's an apprentice electrician. In a few weeks he doubled his income and when he completes the necessary certifications, he is already assured of a job paying almost $50,000 a year and with no university debts to pay off," he said. EFE
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Businessman Offers Apprenticeships to Help Young Latinos Get Ahead
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