Greatest Works

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:4)

2018 has started as a season of new beginnings. We are eight years into the Latrobe journey, recognizing a genesis of new starts and revised focus. While we continue our efforts in career readiness and commercial readiness, an area of need that I never imagined addressing and humbly serving is with youth workforce development. Here’s the backstory:

I got my first job in high school because I enrolled in Distributive Education Clubs of America, commonly known as DECA (https://www.deca.org/). Back then, a major component of the course and benefit to students was that we were required to obtain work experience. In exchange for high school credit hours, students were expected to have gainful employment in our local community, working 15-20 hours per week. My personal motivation was two-fold: 1) I wanted to work to get out of the school day early. 2) I needed to work to earn my own money toward the purchase my first car.

Fast forward thirty years: Latrobe have been contracted to assist our local school district with career navigation and career readiness implementation. The high school subscribes to Jobs for America’s Graduates, JAG (http://www.jag.org/) as an evidence based workforce development model as a preventive measure against dropping out for at-risk youths. Thirty seven core work competencies are grouped into six outcome clusters (http://old.jag.org/model_competencies.htm): 

• Career Development Competencies (6) 
• Job Attainment Competencies (7) 
• Job Survival Competencies (7) 
• Basic Skills Competencies (5) 
• Leadership and Self-Development Competencies (5) 
• Personal Skills Competencies (7)

In the middle, I am curious as to how an entire generation of children missed out on the importance of the high school work experience as an element self-sufficiency and growth. I say that because as 2018 began, I got a call from one of my former high school teachers asking for a personal favor in coaching her granddaughter, a recent college graduate, who has little work evidence on her resume to support the return-on-investment from her education to sustain her salary expectations. The grandmother remarked that these children graduate from high school with fewer life skills than we (our generation) learned in high school (how to obtain, survive, maintain, and develop, and thrive while working).

Instead of blaming the children, I challenge economic development (education, business, and entrepreneurial communities). How are children expected to develop the basic work skills if not invested in and required to obtain said skills as youth? The capstone of the semester long project with the school district is a community sponsored summer jobs program with a purposed intent to match the needs of the business community with the desire of students to earn valuable work experience by

• Promoting entry level jobs for up to 100 students who participate in career readiness
• Marketing job opportunities for local business owners who want to support workforce development
• Providing a potential pipeline of students and job opportunities for the JAG program

Stay tuned and follow the journey of summer youth workforce development in our community. Education, economics, and workforce development all go hand-in-hand (Marilyn Smith, SETX Workforce Solutions). If you have suggestions about what has worked in your experience, feel free to comment, or drop us a line at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com.