Education United States Project #8079

Help Teens Escape Poverty & Become Professionals

by Step It Up, Inc.

Project Report | Jun 1, 2012
Teens Find Real Value through Career Club Internships

By Linda McNeill | CEO

Thea's Internship in 2009

Thank you to all the supporters of SIU's Career Club over the past year!

Your generous contributions are empowering teens and young adults to connect with the people and resources they need to succeed in school, at work and in life. Step It Up, Inc. now works with over 100 teens and young adults, between the ages of 13 and 24, to provide the individualized support services they need to achieve their long-term career and college goals.They are achieving amazing things after an internship through Career Club thanks to your investment in them.

Thea, one of our 2009 interns, did her internship in urban planning and here is what she recently wrote to SIU:

Hello Linda & SIU Staff!

I've been meaning to send you an update of what I've been up to for probably three years now, so I'll go ahead and give you a quick run-down while I have a minute.

Through SIU I had a fantastic internship with PSU's School of Urban and Public Affairs, and helped start up a sustainability camp for youth. Now known as Youth Leaders for Sustainability, the camp is still up and running three years later. The internship helped me realize my interest in urban sustainability in particular, and I am now finishing up me 2nd year at Seattle University earning an Environmental Studies BA with a focus in Urban Sustainability. I am also working part time as a Document Clerk at a law firm in Seattle.

This summer I will be taking a class in Environmental Policy from a member of the European parliament, while working at the law firm as well as with the Seattle University Sustainable Urban Agriculture Project. In the fall I will be leaving Seattle for Uppsala, Sweden, where I will be studying urban sustainability and policy abroad for a semester.

Upon returning I will complete my major, and am hoping to add a minor in Conservation Biology as well. After graduation, I get to choose whether I want to go the wildlife biology route and study plants and animals in the field, stay with agriculture and study the in Central America, or continue on the law and policy route in Portland perhaps working with Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt - a law firm that works in environmental law that I met through the PSU internship.

It seems everything has come full circle, and I really can't thank you enough for helping me find that internship in the first place. Feel free to ask any questions and share my story with SIU. I hope all is very well.

Thank you again, Thea

Links:

Step It Up, Inc. (SIU) website

Back to all project reports

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.