• about the forum
• get involved
  • volunteer opportunities
  • presentation advisor
  • executive coach
  • graphic designer
  • intern
• events
• social innovators
  • 2008 innovators
    • Cradles to Crayons
    • CitySprouts
    • Girls' LEAP
    • ReVision Urban Farm
    • True Colors
    • United Teen Equality Center
  • 2008 pitches
  • past innovators
    • Actor's Shakespeare Project
    • Boston Black Women's Health Institute
    • Boston Children's Chorus
    • Boston Health Care and Research Training Institute
    • Boston Urban Youth Foundation
    • Building Impact
    • Circle Catering
    • Close to Home
    • Common Impact
    • ReDiscovery, Inc.
    • Strong Women, Strong Girls
    • Treehouse Boston
    • Viet AID
    • WriteBoston
    • Zumix
    • 2003 Social Innovators
• partners
  • funders
  • in-kind donors

2008 Social Innovators

United Teen Equality Center

Social Issue Track: Expanding Opportunities for Disadvantaged Youth

Sponsored by: Anonymous Foundation

The United Teen Equality Center (UTEC), founded in 1999, was the result of an organizing movement driven by young people to develop their own teen center in response to gang violence.

Today, UTEC is a youth led agency that uniquely blends a drop-in, safe-haven center with more structured youth development and organizing work, serving over 1,500 Lowell teens annually.

Guided by its core values of peace, positivity, and empowerment, UTEC staff proactively "meet teens where they're at," using every opportunity to build trust and engage them in one or more of its four program areas: Streetwork/Peacemaking, Youth Development, Education, and Youth Organizing/Political Action.

By directly linking preventing and intervention services with youth-led policymaking, UTEC provides a pathway from the street to the state house, from peacemaking to political action for older youth most often overlooked and considered disengaged. UTEC's long-term vision is to serve as a model for other youth agencies across the Commonwealth and beyond.

Social Problem:

• The poverty rate among youth in the state's 10 largest cities in 24 percent, just under one in four and double the statewide average. This concentration of poverty in urban areas leads to a concentration of problems for young people


• Lowell, the 4th largest city in the state, is home to 18,000 young people ages 13 to 23. Approximately one in ten are gang-involved, and there are 25-30 gang sets active at any given time.


• Lowell has the 9th highest teen birth rate in Massachusetts.


• Lowell High School's four-year graduation rate of 69.5 percent ranks in the bottom 10 percent of all high schools in the state.

Key Accomplishments & Social Impact:

• Received Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader award and honored with the Citizens Bank and NECN Champion in Action award.


• Invited by Senator Kennedy to testify at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gang violence prevention


• Facilitated three successful peace summits in 2007, resulting in truces between six rival gang sets

Two-Year Goals:

• Complete the construction of UTEC's new building addition, the second phase of a $6.3 million capital campaign, and expand to serve 2,200 youth per year


• Implement a rigorous evaluation and data-tracking system


• Develop curriculum and pilot program for the Streetworking Training Institute


• Create a leadership development training program for UTEC's youth staff


• Expand the statewide youth policymaking coalition with three regional staff


• Formalize college partnerships to benefit UTEC alternative high school students

Gregg Croteau
Executive Director