Students Earn Income, Gain Valuable Skills

Summer Work Program recently wrapped up for the summer.  As in summers past, the program was in high demand.  We received over 80 applications for 26 spots.  This year’s theme was grow yourself, grow others, grow your influence.

Students had the opportunity to work in businesses and organizations around West Palm Beach Monday through Thursday from 9:00am – 1:30pm.  During this six-week program, they also receive training – work skills, life skills – most of which took place on Friday of each week.

Training was provided in part by four keynote speakers:

• Dr. Bettye Knighton, CEO of Emerge Publishing Group, spoke on personal development, people skills, and personal presentation (attire, speaking, etc.).
• Tony Stubbs with NCCI Holdings, Inc. spoke on personal development and growth, especially through adversity.
• Robert Simpson with Palm Beach Motor Cars moved from personal growth to teaching the students the necessity of teamwork in business.
• Steve Scalici, UYI board member and Vice President at Merrill Lynch, moved from teamwork and accomplishing goals to using the fruit of those accomplishments for the good of others.  He spoke on stewardship from a personal level (budgeting, saving) to influencing the community by giving back.

Most of the training time on Fridays was spent on a hands-on entrepreneurial project.  Students designed coaster sets for Christ Fellowship.

The students really learned the value of and the need for others in a team.   Students learned to listen to others’ opinions while also bringing their own ideas strongly at times.  From a business standpoint, they experienced the need to manage costs and supplies and limit errors.  They learned the importance of being detail-oriented and ensuring the products were completed correctly and on-time.

The students had to work in teams with people with whom they weren’t necessarily comfortable.  Crashing them together got ugly at times – imagine twenty-five students working with people who weren’t their friends (at first), on a highly detailed, highly tedious, highly creative project, with a strict time constraint (about 3 hours each Friday) and almost no hand-holding (only one adult in the room).  When the squeeze is on, the real person comes out and growth can happen more quickly.  The students accomplished their goal – to deliver 400 coasters with Christ Fellowship’s vision statement, everyone, everyday, everywhere – and grew tremendously in the process.

All students were compensated equally for their work placements, but students received incentive pay based on their performance for the coaster project.  Students received anywhere from $15 to $84 depending upon the effort they put in, how they worked with others and their overall attitude.  Welcome to the real world!

This video documents the students' experiences while working on the coaster project.

We are grateful to Town of Palm Beach United Way, City of West Palm Beach Weed & Seed, and many individual who participated in the “bid from the heart” at our charity auction dinner who underwrote the Summer Work Program.