If you’ve been following along with us this year you’ve seen how our programming with young people has grown and expanded and also changed dramatically as we shifted away from in school, daily work with students to sporadic virtual outreach and engagement. We’ve ebbed and flowed and remained committed to supporting the young people we’ve formed relationships with this school year.

Imagine the world in February 2020. It was still cold outside but we somehow avoided snow days. Sports were still very much exciting. We were eager for the spring and at the height of field tripping outside of schools to visit colleges, universities and various employers for career exposure activities. During this same time we learned we would have the opportunity to grow and expand our summer work experiences for youth in partnership with the Philadelphia Youth Network as a Work Ready provider!

Our excitement to provide opportunities for youth this summer in work experiences and internships hasn’t changed under our new circumstances – the way in which we’ll be engaging young people in these areas however, will.

We’re excited to be fully in the planning process to offer incentive based activities and project based learning to young people on topics like financial & digital literacy, college and career exposure and entrepreneurship. Over the next few weeks as we close out the school year and prepare for summer we’re building programming to attempt to leverage the experiences of young people spending more time at home than previous summers by building a program that provides experiences for young people to learn a new skill they can leverage to support this new lifestyle! Topics like baking, sewing, car and home maintenance and other “adulting” considered topics will be provided. In addition, we’re exploring the idea of approaching home management in similar ways to running a business. We’d like to promote young people to become CEO’s of their homes and learn how to best maintain home operations, make improvements, be a team player and sustain a thriving environment for all!

There’s much more to come on our summer plans and we hope to leverage this time in fun, safe and meaningful ways for young people and their families. Be on the lookout for our program announcement and other exciting things to come! If you’re an adult and think you have something to offer to the “adulting” offerings for young people, reach out and let us know!