Teens STEP-UP: Paid internships and free job skill training help youth discover more than just the beach this summer
August 15 will mark the end of STEP-UP Achieve’s 10th year of providing paid summer internships to disadvantaged Minneapolis youth aged 14-21. Through STEP-UP’s internships, young people are given the opportunity to gain work-force experience while earning money and receiving training in important life skill areas, such as resume building and interview coaching. This program, run by the nonprofit AchieveMpls and the city of Minneapolis, has placed teenagers and young adults in nearly 18,000 internships across over 230 employers city-wide throughout its 10-year run. North Minneapolis teens comprise a significant portion of this number; in 2012, for example, 50 percent of all STEP-UP participants were from the Northside.
Employers large and small from a variety of fields, including business, legal, retail, nonprofit, medical, educational, financial, technical and arts and entertainment, hire STEP-UP interns to help them complete large-scale summer projects they would not have the resources to complete otherwise. At the same time, STEP-UP staff works with accepted applicants to match them to an employer in an area that interests them personally or academically.
Since its first placement of 200, 16-21 year-old summer interns in 2004, STEP-UP has widely expanded its outreach to include three sub-programs that better address the needs of select groups of teen applicants—STEP-UP Explore, STEP-UP Discover and STEP-UP Achieve. STEP-UP Explore is geared towards recent immigrants, youth with special needs and youth in specialized school programs. The focus for STEP-UP Explore interns is on work readiness training. This program places interns in non-profit organizations and schools that allow for greater flexibility within their hours and level of engagement to help these teens focus on life skills and basic employee/employer relationship management.
STEP-UP Discover gives 14-21 year-olds with little to no previous job experience, a chance to work a minimum wage job in a nonprofit organization. This program teaches participants how to develop important professional skills. Learning how to use a computer in a professional setting and teaching behavioral rules of conduct on the job, are some of the skills STEP-UP Discover interns will navigate. As they gain confidence, STEP-UP staff works with these emerging professionals to open them up to the variety of opportunities that are available to them after high school.
STEP-UP Achieve is available to 16-21 year olds who have proven their competence in the basic skills taught in the STEP-UP Discover program. Interns in STEP-UP Achieve apply for jobs in both the public and private sectors. Organizations that have taken on STEP-UP Achieve interns in the past include U.S. Bancorp, HealthPartners, Centerpoint Energy, University of Minnesota, Target Corporation and the Minnesota Twins. Youth in these internships have also found placements in political offices, working for former Mayor R.T. Rybak and US Congressman Keith Ellison. Many graduates of STEP-UP Discover end up in the STEP-UP Achieve program, proving that knowledge gained previously can lead to varied and dynamic workforce experiences. Upon completion of the STEP-UP Achieve program, several graduates have been offered a permanent position within the company that interned them. An alumni network, found through the AchieveMpls website, gives these graduates another place to network and share on-the-job learnings.
The STEP-UP program has also partnered with Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and Project for Pride in Living (PPL) to offer classes in math, English, life skills, as well as in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (a.k.a. STEM). These courses are free to STEP-UP interns and can be taken for high school credit.
As STEP-UP Achieve has grown, it has also worked to help teens interested in the program to remove some of the barriers that may make it difficult for them to participate. Working with Metro Transit, STEP-UP Achieve started offering bus cards to interns. These passes cover the cost of transportation to and from internships for the first month of work. U.S. Bank has partnered with STEP-UP to help teens learn financial literacy; everything from basic banking to credit management is covered. Google is another past partner; training STEP-UP youth how to use Google products and applications to help advance them in the workplace.
Next on the horizon, STEP-UP is working with Minneapolis Public Schools to continue providing their internship opportunities to teens throughout the school year. They are also working heavily to recruit employers. Youth interest in STEP-UP continues to grow (there are 1,650 interns working with STEP-UP this summer), and more employer partnerships are needed in order to keep the accessibility of the program viable. In 2012, for example, of the 946 STEP-UP Achieve participants who completed their mandatory workforce training, only 750 were placed in paid internships.
Teens interested in joining STEP-UP next year must be between 14 and 21 by June 1, 2015, live in Minneapolis, must be eligible to work in the US by June, 1, 2015, must not be enrolled in college (although PSEO is okay) and must meet certain income guidelines—Find info at minneapolismn.gov/cped/metp/STEP-UPIntern.