Workforce Development helps kids gain skill and experience

HARRIS, NY — For most of them, this is their first job, but it may turn out to be one of their most valuable in the long run. What seven young people who are part of the Workforce Development Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) are gaining from their six weeks at Catskill Regional Medical Center (CRMC) this summer ranges far beyond the benefits of receiving a paycheck.

Fanned out across different areas of the hospital including food services, environmental services, the family health center and adult day care, these 14- to 18-year-olds are monitored directly by Youth Employment and Training Specialist Ryan Tinsley, senior crew leader Susan Hyranko and Program Coordinator Diana Schock as well as the hospital personnel with whom they work directly in the course of the day. While the hospital staff regards Christine Havre, Shamika Davis, Arthur Ayers, Ashley DeJesus, Cleopatra Spriggs, Mary Jane Donato and Katherine Toro as volunteers, they recognize their special role as part of the Workforce Development program. As such, they report on the student’s progress to the program’s supervisory staff. Their progress is also monitored by Jodi Goodman, CRMC’s Director of Community and Volunteer Services. Laura Quigley directs Workforce Development. Simply put, the young people receive an enormous amount of guidance and supervision.

For their part, the kids know this is not merely a summer job. As part of their training, they are actively involved in building a set of skills that will be applicable to any of their future employment endeavors. In addition to their daily tasks at the hospital, the kids meet regularly to assess what skills they have been working on by filling out a checklist that matches the skills they have been refining against the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills in the workplace (SCANS) list of competencies. The SCANS list includes things like allocating time, money, materials, facilities and human resources. Other SCANS skills relate to obtaining, evaluating and organizing information, interpreting and communicating information, working as part of a team, learning to serve customers and to work with diverse people and understanding systems and technology.

Cleopatra Spriggs, a freshman from Monticello High School, has been working in the family health clinic. “I do filing, answer phones and make appointments,” she notes. “If you really pay attention, you’ll see that you are gaining skills that you will need for a good job, especially communication skills.” Katherine Toro is working towards her G.E.D. works in Food Services. Being bilingual has been useful in her work in the kitchen. “I’d love to open my own Spanish restaurant someday,” says Toro. “This is my first paying job,” notes Ashley DeJesus, an eighth grader from Monticello High School. “I think this work experience is extremely valuable.”

Hyranko, who is now in her fourth year of supervising kids in the summer program, beams when she talks about the kids’ progress. ‘They’ve done a great job in interacting with the patients, the staff and the community at large.”

Hyranko and Schock were delighted to run into Debbie Walker, a Workforce Development Summer Employment alumna who is now completing her fifth year at CRMC as a certified nursing assistant. Walker attributes her success at CRMC to her start with Workforce Development. She now ably assists patients in the hospital’s skilled nursing unit.

This summer Workforce Development trained and employed young people in work sites throughout the county including the Liberty Community Development Corporation, where kids did community mapping; at the Mountaindale Community Development Project; at Sullivan County Community College on the trails and in various departments in the school; as part of South Fallsburg’s beautification project; as vital contributors to the “Shakespeare in the Park” performance of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” and with CACHE, the United Way and in the ATTAIN lab in Monticello.

Anxious to spend their newly earned funds on back-to-school clothes and other things, the kids know they’ll have something left long after that money is gone, including a new-found appreciation for money. “Now I know how hard my mom works for her money,” smiles Mary Jane Donato who worked in Food Services this summer. “I want to be a chef someday. I love to cook.”

Whatever their future aspirations in terms of their chosen fields of employment, you can be sure that the kids who started out in Workforce Development have taken a priceless first step toward making their dreams a reality.