Stimulus funds 279 youth jobs

By Sean F. Driscoll

BusinessRockford.com

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ROCKFORD — Even with a time extension and creative placements, officials in charge of the stimulus-funded summer youth jobs program still couldn’t find work for one-third of the enrollees.

The reason, said Mike Williams, executive director of the Rock River Training Corp., was that most employers asked for older employees, and most of the enrollees were still in high school.

“Most of the kids who didn’t get a job were under 18,” he said. “That’s because most of the work sites requested older youth, which I presume is for liability reasons.”

The program, funded by $1.7 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, sought to give 16- to 24-year-olds work readiness training and place them in summer jobs. Their salaries were paid by the stimulus funding.

Of the 420 youth who enrolled, 279 eventually got jobs. Williams said the program was slow to find placements because of the short time frame they had to get the program running and several unexpected changes in the eligibility requirements from the state.

“What we ended up doing was setting up work experiences with some of the local events going on around town,” he said. “If we’d had more notice, we could have assigned more of them that way.”

Even if the youth weren’t placed in jobs, they still received work skills training during a weeklong orientation session, Williams said. The sessions, which the youth were paid to attend, addressed resume writing, interview skills and workplace etiquette.

Although summer’s long passed, some of the older youth are in still their jobs. Williams said enough funding remained to pay salaries through Dec. 31 if employees requested an extension.

One of those is Nakari Boose. The 21-year-old Rockford resident has been working since Aug. 14 as an office intern at the Northern Illinois Minority Companies Association.

In three months, Boose has learned how to use Microsoft Office products, improved her typing to 48 words per minute and helped organize mailings for the association’s annual banquet.

“This was the job I was scared to come to,” she said. “I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t sure how I’d fit in, if I could make it in an office. I’m glad I proved myself wrong.”

Boose’s supervisor, Excell Lewis, said the NIMCA board had reservations about taking on an intern. They feared there wouldn’t be enough work, and that the mentoring tasks would distract staff from their own work.

The gamble paid off, however, and Lewis is hoping to find money to keep Boose employed into 2010.

“From day one, she has worked very hard for us,” he said. “It’s been remarkable to see her personal and technical skills blossom.”

Reach staff writer Sean F. Driscoll at 815-987-1346 or sdriscoll@rrstar.com.

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