EXPLORING DDOT!

On July 11th, we visited another one of DDOT’s many locations to get a first hand look at what some of the other SYEP participants are doing at work. One of the buildings we visited was the Fabrications Building. Here, the youth help DDOT employees with making street signs. Yes, actual street signs! The signs come blank and have to be put through a machine to establish color. They use stencils to cut out letters & icons for the signs. They also place a special tape on top of the stencils so that they can easily peel off and be put on the sign. On average, it takes approximately and hour to make small signs. The larger ones, similiar to the signs on highways, usually take a bit longer to make. We even got to watch one if the teens make a sign by himself. When asked “what do enjoy most about your job?”, the young man replied “Everything, I like to draw, so this is right up my alley!” We also visited a couple of other buildings in the same area. In one of the buildings, the teens were going through tons of flags, seperating the “worn out” flags from the ones that were in pretty good shape. These flags were often used for parades, national activities and when other countries visit the capitol. There were flags from all over the world, including Morroco, Pakistan, China and Puerto Rico. Last, we were able to visit the Traffic Signals Office where they handle traffic city maintenence & administration. The teens who work in this office help file documents and do other work on the computer.