Hello, I’m Shuna Hayward, vice president of programs with Connect Detroit. As we being to ramp up for our summer employment programs, I want to talk to you about one type of work experience which is where community-based partners place their young people out in the community with worksite partners to provide a worksite-based experience.

Some things you want to consider when placing young people for a worksite-based experience is recruiting and vetting those sites, then you’re going to want to look at what are the quality factors that are going to make a real quality experience for that young person and then finally, you want to make sure that you support and monitor that site during the work experience.

In terms of recruiting, you want to connect with the sites and make sure that they have a clear understanding of the expectations of the program and what you want the young people to get out of it.

That leads us to quality. What we want the young people to get is a quality experience. That will come from a connection to a caring adult on that site who will provide feedback to them, provide direction and also provide exposure to various careers and what their own experience has been like. There will be a mentor for that young person on the site as well as a supervisor.

Then you also, during the experience that the young person is having working at that site, you want to monitor that site and be there as a support for the young person as well as the worksite supervisor.

If you factor in all of these components, a quality recruitment experience, quality experience for the young person and then provide the support to monitoring, our young people will get the best out of their worksite-based experience. Thanks!