Career Empowerment Program for Black Students

For many minority students in the Fox Valley, there is not much of a drive towards getting a successful career in student's future. Many factors contribute to this, but perhaps one of the most impactful is a lack of knowledge given to students on what a successful career could potentially look and feel like. Many opportunities are missed by undergraduate students because they have no knowledge into what a local company does or what it feels like to work for them. That is something the Manager-in-Training (MiT) Program is providing for students.

Manager-in-Training (MiT) is a workforce development program that serves as an extension of the ACE Program, in which we provide students with the knowledge of available career paths and the basic skills needed to get started in these fields. The MiT program in particular focuses on providing students from grades 11 and 12, as well as undergraduate college students, the opportunity to do a job-shadow experience with a professional company in the Fox Valley for a week. The program aims to provide students with practical hands-on experience at an actual company, as well as to give students additional contacts in their network to help them in their job search.

Last June, PCI launched a pilot test of the program. We chose two African American undergraduate college students of academic excellence and had them visit SECURA Insurance in Appleton for a week-long job shadow program. These students got to interact with managers from both the IT and business departments of SECURA Insurance, and both have reported learning many new skills and qualities from their time there. Reception to the overall program was positive on both the sides of our students, and the perspective of SECURA, who partnered with us to provide the job-shadowing experience. The students were behaved, they learned a lot, had very little struggles, and feel confident in potentially persuing a career either with SECURA or in a similar field.

We are looking forward to expanding the program to include more students and more organizations. Sometime next year, we are looking to promote MiT as a beneficial addition to ACE Program and have more students sign on for job shadowing.

Links:

• our main website

Pointters was founded on the principle of helping Black and minorities have easier access to better jobs. This principle extends to the young high school students of Black and minority descent who are at a pivotal moment in their lives where they need to decide on their future. For some students, opportunities for discovering career potentials aren't often made available to them in school. For others, a combination of cultural stigma and expectations prevent them from wanting to pursue careers they desire.

Pointters' efforts to change that include our Academic Career Empowerment (ACE) Program. This is an annual program for high school students in the Fox Valley in which twice a year, students are invited to spend a full day at an event in which they meet professionals from across different job fields and participate in hands-on workshops that teach students some of the practical skills they can bring to this new job field. On top of that, we also provide students with resources towards mentoring programs and chances for early career opportunities via internships or part-time jobs.

This program is run twice every year, for the Fall and Spring terms each. Typically, this program was for high school students of the Appleton Area School District, but last year, we ran an additional program for students of the Oshkosh school district. From Appleton, we were able to get in touch with over 150 students, while Oshkosh had us reach to about over 80 students. In total, we have reached around 230 students last year, and our numbers are expected to grow as we introduce the program to more school districts such as Menasha and Neenah.

Reception to our program has been overwhelmingly positive from both our partners and our students who attend. We have had tremendous success in giving students a jump-start towards their dream careers, as we've had students immediately sign up for interenships with big organizations like Thedacare upon the program's completion. In addition, one of our students was inspired by the ACE program to start a business of his own, and it has been growing steadily over the past year. We're proud of our students and we want to reach out to more!

Links:

• Our website