|
The ongoing pandemic has affected many aspects of our lives, but one thing has remained steadfast: the dedication of Employment Services of Weld County’s (ESWC) Youth Programs staff to ensuring our county’s young people have access to job and training opportunities.
However, the current climate hasn’t made it easy. Karina Amaya, Youth and Adult Employment and Training Manager, has had to find new and innovative ways for her team of 10 to reach out to the community to raise awareness and recruit young people into the many free programs offered through ESWC. The usual face-to-face methods of interacting with the public haven’t been possible, so digital options had to be utilized.
“Desperate times truly call for desperate measures,” Amaya said. “Those measures included online advertising, sending flyers and applications to every middle and high school we could think of, monthly networking meetings and lots and lots of emails.”
Some of those emails were sent to local towns, cities and chambers of commerce.
“Involving our municipalities and chambers was a brand-new idea for this year,” said Amaya. “Their response was fantastic, and they stepped up in a way we could never imagine. Not only did they pass along our program information to the youth in their communities, but they actually offered positions to the kiddos in our Weld Works 4 Youth program as well.”
Weld Works 4 Youth serves 14- and 15-year-old Weld County residents who are receiving or involved with at least one service through the Department of Human Services, such as Medicaid, food stamps, prevention services, foster or kinship care, or if they’ve recently been adopted or returned home from foster care. Participants work 20 hours per week in June and July, finishing in time to go back to school in the fall. Besides learning customer service skills through their temporary job placements, participants are also taught valuable life skills through a series of eight workshops (which have temporarily become virtual). The program focuses on serving youth in unincorporated areas of the county, with over half of the participants living outside of Greeley. Every effort is made to place program participants in jobs within a one- to two-block area of where they live to make commuting as easy as possible.
“We were hesitant to start up Weld Works 4 Youth this year, not knowing if we’d be able to recruit enough young people in time, but we decided to go for it,” Amaya said. “And we’re so glad we did, because we had a huge turnout! We received 137 applications for the 80 positions we had to fill, and more were still coming in well past the deadline.”
All 80 recruits were placed in a variety of service-focused jobs, including positions at the City of Fort Lupton, City of Greeley Museums and Parks Department, Town of Severance, Windsor Chamber of Commerce, Town of Milliken Public Works, Weld Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Catholic Charities Guadalupe Center, Boys and Girls Clubs of Weld County, High Plains Engineering and Design, Lighthouse Baptist Church at Hill-N-Park, Montessori Academy of Northern Colorado, Renewable Fiber and many others. Eight youth were placed in the Jr Corps to complete community service projects, such as weeding at a local strawberry farm, gardening at the St. Vrain Historical Society and assisting with the beautification and restoration of Riverside Park in Evans.
“Finding employers for our kiddos is always the toughest part,” said Amaya. “This year, we specifically targeted our recruitment efforts on places needing extra help because of COVID-19, whether due to an increased workload or a decrease in their on-site employees. We’re so grateful for the positive reception from our business partners, and I’m also so impressed with how eager our youth have been with wanting to jump in and help out in their community.”
Participants of other ESWC Youth Programs have also been particularly involved in their communities during the pandemic. For instance, AmeriCorps members have spent hundreds of hours working at the Weld Food Bank and cleaning up local parks from 2013 flood damage (plus they recently cleared damaged trees in Pierce following the June 6 derecho – read the article here) and TIGHT crew members picked up hundreds of pounds of food for the Salvation Army and assisted older and disabled adults with yard cleanup referred through the Weld County Area Agency on Aging.
Even though ESWC had limited and difficult recruitment options for their Youth Programs this year, plus smaller crews due to social distancing safety precautions, it’s inspiring to see Weld County youth and local businesses step up to serve their communities in such a meaningful way.
By Megan Garziano, Weld County Communications Specialist
|
