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Spotlight Feature
Young Adults' Summer Internships End But New Skills and Experiences Last
by Martha Shirk
Samantha Ford
Before she went to Mali, West Africa, in July to help build a school, Samantha Ford, 17, of Bridgeport, Conn., had her sights set on becoming a police detective or an FBI agent. Her Mali experience, however, has pointed her in a new career direction. "I know now that I want to go into the Peace Corps after college," she says.
Whether they were learning to make concrete blocks in Africa or helping women in Detroit with their lunch-hour workout routines, young people from the Jim Casey Youth Opportunity Initiative sites, like Samantha, kept busy last summer in internships that broadened their knowledge of potential careers and deepened their experience in the world of work.
The Initiative sites all work closely with Opportunity Passport™ participants to help them formulate education and career goals and gain workplace experience. Summer internships not only provide the opportunity to earn money, but to try out potential careers that youth might not otherwise consider.
"One overlooked consequence of foster care is the very narrow view of careers that youth are exposed to," notes Gary Stangler, the Initiative's executive director. "Police, teachers, and social workers are often their full exposure to what is possible. When you live in a group home with restrictive leave policies, you don't meet many accountants or entrepreneurs or international relief workers."
Continue reading for a glimpse of what some Jim Casey youth did to broaden their horizons last summer.
Through a national youth development program called Building with Books, Samantha Ford had two great summer experiences: a month-long internship with the Bridgeport Police Department and a two-week community service trip to Mali, West Africa.
The police department internship was interesting, said Samantha, who had once dreamed of a career in law enforcement. But the trip to Mali changed her life. She is now thinking about a career in international development or relief work.
Building with Books (www.buildingwithbooks.org) is a nonprofit organization based in Stamford, Conn., that combines youth development programming with international education and community service. Since 1991, BwB, as it's known, has sent thousands of youth like Samantha to help build 215 schools in eight developing countries.
To qualify for the trip, Samantha committed to a year-long sequence of monthly workshops and one-on-one sessions on communication, teamwork, and leadership skills with adult staff and peer role models. By July, when she left for Mali with other students from Connecticut and New York, she knew a lot of facts and figures about Mali. But she was blown away by the warm welcome from villagers in Bomou, where she lived with a host family, slept on a straw mattress, and helped build a three-room schoolhouse.
Samantha worked in all aspects of the school construction, from building the foundation to mixing cement to molding bricks to digging a latrine to making rebar. As a little girl, she had helped her father, a construction worker, build the family's house, so it brought back fond memories and forgotten skills. But the best times were spent getting to know the villagers.
"I loved every minute of it," she said. "The people there were so wonderful. They are so happy and generous. Even though they don't have much, they would give you anything they have."
Samantha was struck by how much Malians value education. "They're yearning for it," she said. "It's not like here where kids skip classes and don't do their homework."
Now caught up in the senior-year routine, Samantha is determined to not let her Mali memories fade. She's serving as president of her school's BwB chapter this year and plans to give eight talks about her experience, with the goal of recruiting other students for the program. She's even thinking about applying to colleges that offer instruction in Bambara, a language spoken in Mali.
"I don't want to lose the impact of this experience," she says. "I'm trying to keep it alive and remember that people don't all live like us. When I think about it now, my heart almost hurts, because I miss it so much," she says.
Kaila Kelly
Kaila Kelly, 19, of Portland, Maine, moved closer to her goal of a social services career thanks to her Opportunity Passport™ through the Maine Youth Opportunities Initiative. In a position that drew on skills honed in her previous jobs, plus her experiences in a busy foster family, Kaila wowed her supervisors at First Jobs Maine, which provides initial and transitional employment opportunities to youth in foster care.
Kaila served as a job coach to Jonathon Sarson, 15, and Catherine Sarson, 16, in their jobs as grocery baggers at Hannaford Brothers, a grocery store. Kaila was charged with helping them succeed, a challenging task, given that neither had ever worked before and they fought like siblings, which they are.
"I was there to guide them and make sure they didn't get overwhelmed and flip out," Kaila says. "The biggest problem I had with them was that they bickered, like brothers and sisters do."
Kaila said that Catherine mastered the job quickly, but that Jonathon, who is easily distracted, needed more support. To keep him on task, Kaila drew on her three years of experience as a lifeguard and swim instructor. "When he became overwhelmed with bagging, I'd find something else for him to do, like round up carts or collect the red baskets," she said.
It also helped that she lives in a foster family with six other children, ages 6 to 24. "All the kids in my home have things they need help with, so I'm very creative. I can think on the spot," says Kaila, 19, a sophomore at Southern Maine Community College.
Kaila's job performance drew praise from her supervisors at First Jobs Maine. "It has been clear to us that the combination of Kaila's motivation, her perspective from actually being a youth in care, and her pursuit of higher education made for an extremely effective job coach, working with youngsters who have also dealt with trauma and loss," said Rob Franciose, consulting director.
Several Opportunity Passport™ participants from the Michigan Youth Opportunity Initiative site were placed in internships in Detroit through a Door Opener (one of the features of the Opportunity Passport™) called the Summer Training Enrichment Program (STEP), which recruits employers to hire youth in foster care. The interns received a week of training before being deployed to individual worksites for seven weeks.
Gorgeous Young's internship at Curves, a women-only exercise club, came with a bonus: She could exercise as much as she wanted. "My body is looking much toner than it had been," she said. Gorgeous, 22, did a little bit of everything in the job, from staffing the desk to training new members about the exercise stations to calculating members' body mass indices.
Gorgeous has had other summer jobs in the past, but liked this one more because of the club's friendly atmosphere. "I did not know people could be that nice," she said.
Gorgeous did such a good job that the manager asked her to come on the Curves payroll as a regular part-time employee. The manager's praise for her performance also led STEP to hire her part-time.
Gorgeous, who attends Wayne County Community College, managed to save all of her earnings from the internship—about $2,000—in her Opportunity Passport™. "I'm a saver," she said. "I like to save so I don't have to ask nobody for nothing, because you never know what's going to happen."
Datrell Gaither, 20, worked at Bizdom U, a nonprofit entrepreneurship academy started by Dan Gilbert, the founder of Rock Financial and Quicken Loans, Inc. In the summer of 2006, Datrell had an internship at Quicken Loans.
In his interactions with students and instructors, Datrell got an insider's view of what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. His job involved general office work—"processing paperwork, answering phones, providing customer service, telling people about the program, scheduling appointments, and running errands," Datrell said. "It was good fun going to work every day. I liked the people I worked with."
Datrell is a sophomore at Wayne State University. He wants to some day own his own real estate business.
Donna Jenkins worked as a computer technician at Four C's, a family resource center. Four C's refurbishes donated computers and gives them to people who need them. Through the summer, Donna got 15 computers ready for new homes.
The internship helped Donna figure out what she does not want to do with her life. "It was fun, but I don't think that's my real passion," she said. "My real passion is working with kids."
Donna, 20, has worked part-time at a day-care center for three years and feels surer than she did before that she wants a child-oriented career. However, those plans are on hold for the moment, since she is expecting a baby in December.
Anthony Reeves, 25, of Atlanta, spent his summer days working for men and women in black robes—the justices of the Georgia Supreme Court.
Anthony Reeves
Anthony was recruited by Michelle Barclay, director of the court's Committee on Justice for Children, who also serves on the Atlanta site's Community Partnership Board. Anthony was given three main tasks: to develop a "know your rights" workshop for youth in foster care, to draft a presentation to judges and caseworkers about the importance of youth involvement in their case plans, and to develop protocols for youth's presence in court.
"A big issue with judges here is that they don't want to involve youth with their case plans or have them in their courtrooms, because they're afraid it might traumatize them," Anthony said. "I was brought in to help change their opinions. I have been presenting at different summits all summer, training judges and state workers to make them more aware of these needs."
Anthony loved the internship. "I've learned so much over the summer," he said. "I've learned how to improve my presentation skills and reach different audiences. I'm still amazed that they want me to train judges, even without a bachelor's degree."
Anthony has been asked to stay on this fall as a part-time legal consultant. He plans to work 25 hours a week while working on his bachelor's in electronic engineering and technology at DeVry University, where he's a senior.
Three youth from Jim Casey sites were selected from hundreds of applicants for the All-Stars summer internship offered by FosterClub, the national online network for children in foster care. They spent three months researching policy issues, developing advocacy materials, and helping plan and lead conferences for youth in foster care around the country.
Jen Leedy
The three—Jen Leedy of Clinton Township, Michigan, Sherena Johnson of Atlanta, and Alex Pringle of Denver—began their summers with a week-long training session in the quaint beach town of Seaside, Ore., before moving to their summer-long base in a dormitory at Portland State University. Their duties required them to travel to conferences of youth in foster care all over the United States.
Jen, 20, helped out at conferences in Oregon, Colorado, Connecticut, Tennessee, and North Carolina. She drew on her natural talent and acting ability to make the "Getting Educated" workshop more interesting than many youth apparently expected it to be. "It was a challenge getting their attention on that topic, but I tried to make it fun," she said. "I'm loud and exaggerated, which helps."
Sherena Johnson
Jen enjoyed getting to know the other All-Stars and watching them mature over the summer. "We were all so diverse, but we didn't form cliques, and there was no drama," she said. "Some of them had never lived outside a group home or a foster family before, and they had to learn to do things on their own," she said. "I had been living on my own for two years, so it was more of an emotional growth experience for me."
Jen found her interactions with youth still in foster care intensely emotional. "By the end of each conference I could see a difference in so many of the youth," she said. "They really bonded with us and each other and opened up."
Now back at Macomb Community College, she plans to stay active with FosterClub through the year as a spokesperson on mental health issues.
Sherena, 22, ran workshops at youth conferences in Oregon, Missouri, California, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia. Her specialty was the "Getting Solid" workshop, which is designed to help youth in foster care think about permanence. "They usually came in feeling like that didn't need any help," she said. "But the workshop helped them see why they do. It ended up being one of their favorite workshops. It always ran over because they ended up so engaged."
Alex Pringle
What made "Getting Solid" Sherena's favorite workshop was that she was able to weave in her personal story. "I told the youth about how I didn't receive permanence until I was 22 and had already aged out of care," she said. A woman she met at work in the state Department of Human Resources has become a mother figure for her, she said.
Sherena said that she grew immeasurably through the summer experience. "When I came back, a lot of people said I had grown," she said. She made a lot of connections that she thinks will help her achieve her goal of going to graduate school in social work. She's in her senior year at Clayton State University and working part-time as an intern in the state's independent living program.
Though reticent by nature, Alex, 23, found that he liked leading workshops, especially one called "Biohazard," designed to help youth deal with their biological relatives. Drawing on his own experiences, Alex told youth: "Just be careful. And make sure that you don't get taken advantage of. Let people in, but keep a safe distance."
Alex felt that his summer work made a positive difference in many lives. "The youth loved us," he said. "They liked seeing that people from their backgrounds can do so much. I was a role model to them."
Unlike the other All-Stars, Alex won't be able to continue his advocacy work through the year, since he recently began basic training for the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. After basic training, he will attend advanced technical training in Austin and then be assigned to a medical unit, most likely overseas.
