Metro Nashville Information Related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - Inside Look
NCAC Taps ARRA Funding to Reach Out to Unemployed Youth
By Mollie Adcock, Hillwood High School
With the recent surplus of adult job-seekers (Thanks, Recession) combined with the majority of teenagers’ lack of work experience, could it be that no one feels the need to take on the role of someone’s first boss? And with that recent surplus of adults looking for jobs, no one has to anymore.
When you’re young, finding a summer job is like a rite of passage; it’s a milestone much like the first day of high school, the first kiss, the first car. A teen’s first job is like a Sudoku puzzle: confusing, complicated, and once it’s finished you’re left with a feeling of total accomplishment. However, how can teens experience this milestone if no one is willing to offer it to them?
Thanks to two stimulus-funded grants from the U.S. Department of Labor, the ARRA WIA Youth and ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grants, The Nashville Career Advancement Center (NCAC) is able to provide a solution. The grants, which total $2,902,022, were given to help youth reach their goal of employability.
While both stimulus grants set up programs and services to help employ youth, the grants do vary. The ARRA WIA Youth grant sets up multiple programs – mentorships, employment opportunities, etc - aimed to help more disadvantaged youth go out into the workforce while gaining life knowledge. The ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grant, however, set up one specific program – a summer internship for high school students to get paid experience by working throughout Metro Departments. All of the programs these ARRA grants have set up, however, are doing a great service to the youth of Nashville.
Youth Programs Thrive at NCAC With ARRA Funding
For six years, NCAC has been offering youth (14-24) these programs and services aimed to help them advance into the workforce and gain direction as well as experience by placing youth inside of work environments within the Metro community. Before receiving these grants, NCAC had relied on funding from NCAC’s general fund dollars (city money) as well as from the participating Metro departments to financially run these programs. However, since receiving these ARRA grants, NCAC has not only been able to double the number of youth that are served throughout these programs, but now NCAC and the participating Metro departments don’t have to use their own money to keep these programs up and running. The programs and services offered have expanded, and the number of departments and offices that participate within the programs have grown.
NCAC was given these grants based on the increased teen unemployment rate, as well as the poverty and drop-out rate in the local area. In the last few years, Tennessee’s teen unemployment rate has been hovering close to 30%, with one out of three teens actively looking for a job not being able to find one. NCAC hopes that these programs will lower those statistics. Ellen Zinkiewicz, NCAC’s Community Service Director, explains that the Nashville Career Advancement Center is here to connect youth to services available in the community, to pay for the services that will get them where they need to be, and to create services that a youth may need that may not be otherwise there. With the help of these ARRA grants, NCAC is able to do just that.
For youth, NCAC focuses most on summer employment, since it has always been the ideal time for youth employment since the school-year obligations (sports, homework, etc) aren’t present. By recieving both the ARRA WIA Youth and ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grants, NCAC was able to employ 1,138 young people last summer at summer jobs throughout the community, and 50 of those young people went on to permanent jobs with the employers that NCAC set them up with. While the programs vary in experience and placement (some work in an office, while others go off to be camp counselors), all of the programs are designed to link the participants’ interest with their work, to expand on their own career goals, and to connect them with employers that could potentially hire them later on. In doing so, NCAC hopes to assist youth to grow into capable adults.
ARRA Funding Doubles Number of Summer Interns
The program funded by the ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grant is the same program that has allowed me, a 17-year-old, to have the pleasure of working as an intern in the Metro Finance Department’s Division of Grants Coordination for the month of June – and thus gave me the opportunity to write this article.
While interns in the Metro Summer Internship Program have been going to work for one of the participating Metro departments for six years, last summer the internship was able to double in all aspects – how many departments participated and how many youth were employed (it jumped from 25 to 50) - none of which would have happened without the ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grant.
This year, myself along with 50 other high school students went through the job-process (applications and interviews) in order to be placed throughout participating departments in Metro – the Police Department, the Library, the Mayor’s Office, for example. The internship lasts for four weeks – the entire month of June – with each intern getting paid $8/hour for working a total of 80 hours. Along with working within Metro, the interns met at Glencliff High School once a week for four hours to go through job training, something that has been a benefit to all interns. While not every intern has worked at the same department, all have learned the valuable lessons of work, and have had the opportunity to get real work experience.
Deborah Crosby, a teacher at Glencliff, has been helping to train the participating interns for three summers now, and has seen the benefit of it firsthand. “Working in situations like these, where you have to be on time and interact with adults, it gives teens a valuable lesson. Not only are they able to get the real world experience that everyone’s always looking for,” she continues, “but they’re able to apply what they’ve learned in school to the real world. Programs like these allow for students to see the relevance, as well as to gain direction and become more employable.”
Ana Antunovic, a 16-year-old who is interning at the Hermitage Fire Department Head Quarters, agrees. In the past year she has applied for multiple jobs, all of which she didn’t get (she blames her lack of experience and the number of job-seekers). Through this internship, Ana says that she has gained experience she wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, and that this internship helped her to find out what she’s interested in for a future career. And with the help of NCAC’s internship, she now has the proper knowledge and skills to go on and start that career. “Before, I didn’t really know what it was like to work. I’m more motivated to go work now because I know what it takes,” Ana explains, “This internship gave me direction – seeing the firefighters do what they do; it made me realize that I want to help people. This whole experience has inspired me.”
That is the goal of all of NCAC’s youth employment programs: to help inspire and motivate teenagers to work by giving them the skill set and the experience to do so. Every adult that I spoke with who has participated in this internship wants the internship not only to inspire change in the youth they work with, but to help mold the future. Crosby states, “I hope that these kids can see the importance of what they’re doing, and that they can be the small part of the bigger puzzle. These departments are valuing [the interns]; they’re challenging them with important tasks. And if the kid does a good job, then not only are they setting a trend for the future of themselves, but also for future teenagers that are going to want to work.”
While some may not see why teens would need jobs so badly, Tennessee’s economic health will benefit from by preparing youth to work. These teens will go on and get jobs, and in doing so they will ensure the companies located in the community (whether they be nationwide, corporate chains or a mom’n’pop shops) that they will have the necessary workers to keep their location within the community. Likewise, putting money in teen’s pockets may seem like a waste to some (All they will do is spend it on McDonalds, on purses, on ice cream!), it is in fact just the opposite.
As Zinkiewicz explained, “Teens will stimulate the economy. While adults go and take the money from their paycheck and put it away into credit card payments, into savings account, teens will most likely spend the money immediately and boost local, community businesses.” So many people need to work – including teens. There are those teenagers – perhaps more than you’d think – who want to help, who want to work, and who need to work. It is to our advantage to have a workforce population of all ages that have the skill set and that understand what work means and thus feel prepared to work. Having that is a value to employers in a community, not a hindrance.
Troubled Youth Empowered by ARRA Enhanced WIA Youth Programs
NCAC understands this completely, which is why for the past six years they’ve worked directly with teens to help them move forward in the workforce and into their lives. Aside from the ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental funded internships, the broader ARRAWIAYouth grant has allowed for NCAC to expand its other youth programs. The majority of the young people in the basic WIA Youth programs are facing serious barriers (such as pregnancy, drop-out, foster care, etc) and thus they statistically face even more opposition when it comes to finding a job. NCAC works with these young people to help them gain confidence by setting them up with their own mentor. Zinkiewicz explains that these mentors “believe that any young person can succeed and will succeed. We all have high expectations for our youth, and our goal is to work together with them in order to help them advance on in life.” And, in the end, that will show these young people that they are worthy and capable of doing whatever it is they want to in life.
For teenagers, first jobs are a big deal. There are those that want one so that they can buy shoes and fill up their gas tanks. There are also those who need a job so that they can help support their family and themselves. Regardless of why a teen may get a job, all teens benefit from having one. As a community, not allowing our teenagers to work is not only doing them a disservice – but doing the entire community a disservice.
The federal Government has recognized the need for change amongst teens, and in giving the Nashville Career Advancement Center the ARRA WIA Youth and ARRA WIA Youth Supplemental grants, they are supporting that effort for change. They are allowing for NCAC to take the initiative into directing the future. They believe in the youth and the future of Nashville.
As Ellen Zinkiewicz says, “These kids that we work with – no matter where they’ve come from, what decisions they’ve made – they’re great kids. Hopefully programs like this, having them go out and work [with adults], will remind and show adults that teens are capable [of working] and are, in fact, going somewhere.”