MAKING A DIFFERENCE : We Care for Youth: : Turn Lives Around With ‘Ipeccable’ Job-Hunt Skills

All of the academic or vocational ability in the world won’t help high-school students get a job if they do a lousy interview or don’t know how to follow up. Youths who lack these job-hunting skills may be vulnerable to gang activity or to dropping out of school.

We Care for Youth, a nonprofit organization, gives at-risk students a job-hunting edge with a three-week workshop organized in collaboration with Glendale high schools and the Glendale Galleria. The program, open to to youths 13-18, teaches job-search and interview techniques, communication skills including voice projection and the etiquette of thank-you notes, and work habits such as punctuality and teamwork. Trainers use discussions, role-playing and journal-writing exercises to help participants draw connections between workday demands and tasks and larger values such as honesty, respect and a concept they call “impeccability”--defined as being able to bring one’s best to whatever one does.

STEP BY STEP

Selection

School counselors and assistant principals seek teens at risk for gang activity, with limited incomes or in need of after-school activities.

Training

Teens attend early evening classes at the mall four days a week. Trainers come from the state Employment Development Department, retail consultants and We Care for Youth staff. Mall management donates space and underwrites consultant’s fees, workshop materials and graduation ceremony costs.

Graduation

Those who attend every class receive high-school credit, participate in graduation ceremonies and are guaranteed job interviews with participating mall merchants.

ONE LIFE CHANGED

When I took the program I had just gotten out of spending eight months in jail. From We Care for Youth I learned about being yourself, having loyalty to your family, thinking about racism. I know it’s only a few weeks, but the message comes from strangers who are making an effort to care for you and spend time with you. And you become curious--why are these people doing this for me? At the end I even cried a little because all that they were saying related to me so much.

I’d be gangbanging probably if I hadn’t spent those three weeks at the workshop. It helped me to change my life.

--Edgar Chavez, 18, senior at Alan Daily High School, works part-time for a City of Glendale recreation program.

UNEXPECTED BENEFITS

Going in the issue was: Kids want to work, merchants may have jobs open, let’s match them. The job matching works, but we also saw that the program was having a much bigger impact than we first imagined. Kids are transformed by what they learn. They have more self-confidence, project and present themselves differently.

--Cindy Chong, General Manager, Glendale Galleria

THE WORD SPREADS

More than 700 students have graduated since the first workshop at the Glendale Galleria in October, 1992. A similar program has been developed at the Montebello Town Center shopping mall, and in two Glendale middle schools. Mall operators from as far as Georgia and North Carolina have called to learn about We Care for Youth.

TO GET INVOLVED

(818) 502-5836.

Researched by CATHERINE GOTTLIEB / Los Angeles Times