FALL RIVER — Matt Melo handed a gray T-shirt to Lulu Macomber and watched her flatten out the wrinkles and press a logo to the center.

It was Melo’s first day of work at the Spectrum Empowerment Project, a little factory that opened in March to offer a positive work environment to young people with autism.

“They want what everybody wants: to be productive,” said Spectrum co-founder Pamela Ferro.

Ferro and Donald Lambert founded the organization as a sort of spin-off of Youth Musical Theatre Corp. and in collaboration with the Gotschall Access Program at Bristol Community College, giving young people with autism more opportunities to sing and act, go to college and now gain employment.

The three-pronged inclusion approach gives the young people something else, too – friends, a place to hang out and some cash.

“For the first time in their lives, they’re living a full life,” Lambert said. “And, they have their own money.”

All 12 of Spectrum’s employees are among the first class to graduate from the Gotschall program this year after completing three years of classes that cater to their interests and abilities.

What happens following graduation was the conundrum.

“What do they do after that? It’s hard to fit them into a real stressful environment,” Lambert said. “They just don’t work that way.”

Lambert said there is an 85 percent unemployment rate among people with autism.

Since Macomber’s mom Kim was already making T-shirts for Youth Musical Theatre Corp., the program was expanded to include the young workers.

“It’s a beautiful collaboration,” Ferro said.

“It was a concept, and then it just was,” Lambert said.

And this little factory, located in the historic Clover Leaf Mills at 1 Fr. Devalles Blvd., is already going strong.

“We’ve sold hundreds of T-shirts right from day one,” Lambert said.

Spectrum’s most recent order was for 75 T-shirts to be sold at the Food Truck Festival this Saturday, May 25, noon to 4 p.m., at Gates of the City on Ponta Delgada Boulevard.

Things are already expanding in the little factory.

With a $6,500 grant from Shriver Clinical Services in the Boston area, the group purchased a T-shirt press and other equipment.

Diman Regional Vocational-Technical High School has donated a six-armed screen-printing machine that can produce 200 T-shirts per hour.

Other donors have given T-shirts. A hat press is also on the way.

The group has help from a graphic designer and a local artist to help the employees create their own designs.

The new equipment will enable Spectrum to take large orders in the thousands. Each order will help sustain the business that pays its part-time employees above minimum wage at $12.50 per hour.

The work environment seems to be a happy one.

Lambert said employees can stop if they need to and listen to music or chat.

“We take our company and wrap it around them,” he said.

“The students are directing it,” Ferro said. “The environment is structured for them.”

While concessions are made for employees, Lambert said they also learn they must be committed to their jobs.

“On Thursdays, I set our schedule for the next week,” Lambert said. “If they commit to it, I expect them to be here.”

Ferro said nothing like this has been available locally to young people with autism.

She said she foresees opportunities for “as many people as we can manage.”

Ferro, the mom of a young man with autism, said she considers this to be her “life’s work. It’s just coming together.”

Besides T-shirts, the group is manufacturing personalized doggie bandanas, and has plans to design aprons and pot holders. They’re still brainstorming new ideas, too.

But it’s not really about the products.

“We’re in the T-shirt business,” Lambert said. “But, we’re really in the employee business.”

More information about Spectrum Empowerment is available at spectrumproject.net/#/.

Email Deborah Allard at dallard@heraldnews.com.

