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Date: 8/25/2021
HOLYOKE – Thanks to a grant through the attorney general’s office, the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club is able to further fund their Health Summer Jobs program.
Director of Program Development for the club Conor Bevan said they had “been very fortunate” to be a part of and receive funds for their Healthy Summer Jobs Youth Grant Program each year. He said the grant was “directly” and “intimately tied” to their mission. “Teens can’t be successful if they’re not given job opportunities or if they’re not given professional skills,” he said.
The program hosted by the Boys and Girls Club gives teenagers who have been an active part of the club an opportunity to work at the club throughout the summer. The summer employment program, Bevan explained, consists of an eight-week program with more than 20 teenagers work for the club. The grant, he said, helps pay for the employment of some of the teens. “This funding will provide three teens the ability to reach their full potential,” he said.
Elements of the program include teaching the teens real-life job experience such as attending team meetings, team building activities, job shadowing and performance reviews. “Some of the elements of the program is all the teens are involved in an orientation period [and] one week of job shadowing. They’re engaged in all staff meetings and team building activities [and] paired with a youth development professional as their mentor,” he said. “They have a performance review, so they’re exposed to the review process [and we] provide rewards and incentives for the team.”
Bevan emphasized that while the teens are employees of the club for the summer, and hopefully longer, they also have fun as part of the program. “We try to have fun with them ... We just took some of them that were doing really well to Brownstone [Adventure Sports Park]. It could be a field trip, an experiential learning trip, it could be a form of a gift card to restaurants, for clothing, [or] anywhere they like,” he said. “We have a whole gamut of rewards and incentives. We want to reinforce positive behavior in the workplace.”
Bevan said there were many teens active in the club, which can sometimes make it difficult to choose who to allow into the program. “It’s nearly impossible, we serve over 800 teens a year. It’s difficult to select. The ones that do [participate in the program] all displayed levels of leadership qualities for extended periods of time, good citizenship not only at the club but at schools [and are] committed to academic and healthy lifestyles,” he said. “Not just for a month, these are extended periods of time."
He went on to say, “Our kids who are selected are all club mentors who have previously displayed leadership qualities [and] good citizenship,” adding that participants have also had experience “previously volunteering as mentors to younger kids.”
Overall, during the summer of 2021, Bevan said more than 20 teens were employed through the program, but the grant allowed for the funding of three positions. “While we do employ several teens, we have over 20 teens working for us, this grant covers the cost of three teens for the entire summer. What’s really important is these job experiences that the teens have in the summer months are life changing,” he said. “They’ll remember their first workplace experience for the rest of their lives. It gives three more teens that experience they’re never going to forget.”
Bevan said during their time working for the club in the summer the teens served in several roles in hopes of providing them with “a full picture of the club operation.” He said, “They serve as facilitators of our activities, help with set up and breakdown of program activities, they serve as mentors to younger children, they do learn the formal mentor/mentee relationship, they assist with the administration of safety protocols [and] learn about the importance of safety in the workplace.”
“We really do our best to give them a little taste of everything,” Bevan said.
While the teens are only employed through the summer as part of the program, Bevan said the club always hopes that they remain employees throughout their high school career and potentially during their transition to college.
“We find that most of them stay with us, the vast majority of our teens almost all will stay with us throughout their whole high school career,” he said. Bevan added that most of the teens, though employed throughout the day at the club, will also remain actively engaged in programs and activities for teens offered by the club throughout the program.
“Many of the teens, if they aren’t already, stay during evening hours for teen drop in mentorship. They are here at 7:30 [a.m.] and stay to participate in programs,” he said. “They could go from mentor to participant in a volleyball program.”
Bevan said the skills taught in the program were important as many teens don’t have the opportunity outside of the program to experience real life work experience at such a young age. “There are soft professional skills that many teens don’t have the opportunity to experience and those skills are as simple as time management, punctuality, dress code, appropriate communication skills [and] how to be a team player in a workplace environment,” he said. “So it’s that type of etiquette that they develop here. It translates into the college classroom. Whether they go into higher education through college, a trade or [a] military option, those skillsets are all going to be required of them as they mature.”
Bevan said though the pandemic there was a “lot of energy focused on school-aged youth,” however, teens have experienced significant learning and experience gaps due to COVID-19 as well. “They had limited social and recreational opportunities, missed out on sports, missed out on proms [and] other teenage milestone opportunities. They lost out just as much as any other population,” he said. “The teenage years are when kids are exposed to independence as well as more risky behaviors, and these decisions they make now affect them as they transition into adults.”
More information on the Boys and Girls Club, teen programs and the summer program is available online at https://www.hbgc.org/index.php/en