In July and August, participants in Malden’s Summer Youth Employment Program – funded in part by the state through a YouthWorks grant – had the time of their lives working on the City’s “Parkumentary” social media project. Fourteen and 15-year-olds had the rare opportunity to work in paid positions filming, documenting, and reporting on 17 of the City’s more than 50 parks. As well, the social media project team created a documentary of other participants throughout the entire City’s Summer Youth Employment Program on their experiences in the program. The result of these efforts is a twenty-minute video, excerpts of which were presented at Commonwealth Corporation’s end-of-summer YouthWorks Professional Convening in Quincy. The video has been seen by Secretary of the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development Rosalin Acosta, City of Malden Mayor Christensen and has been viewed over 170 times on YouTube. You can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMnnEFgF41Q
In between filming and editing, youth learned invaluable work readiness skills using the Signal Success curriculum. The participants learned a great deal about personal and professional accountability, collaboration, initiative and cooperation – skills that all employees need in today’s workforce.
