One of the students, Jennifer E. Rice, directs pointed rebukes at several young men who stand in a corner chatting while she paints. Rice's clothes are covered in white paint but she is proud of her diligence and particularly vocal.
"If you're not doing what they ask you to do then you shouldn't be here!" Rice declares.
Rice says she hopes to use her scholarship for construction training and then go on to study child psychology.
Bermudez says YouthBuild goes out of its way to avoid coddling its participants.
According to Bermudez, only a few of the roughly 50 students who begin Youth-Build each year end up earning the community service scholarship, and only about 50 percent earn their GEDs.
"It's a combination of [dangling] a carrot and using a paddle," he jokes