Career Campaign: Ready To Launch

January 9, 2016January 10, 2016 / Promise / Leave a comment

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It’s by no means easy, but it was both important and inspiring. “It” was the third-annual New Haven Promise Internship Fair, co-hosted by the Yale Community Hiring Initiative.

On Thursday night more than 130 New Haven Promise Scholars gathered at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gym. With basketballs bouncing 20 feet below, the Scholars met with hiring managers from more than two dozen agencies in the first step toward landing a paid summer internship in their field of study.

More than half of the Scholars in attendance will land one of those coveted positions.

“Not only will this provide Promise Scholars about a quarter-million dollars to help cover college-going expenses,” said Executive Director Patricia Melton. “They will also gain valuable career experience and networking opportunities that will help them return to New Haven after they graduate from college. And we are extremely pleased to have new agencies, like Yale-New Haven Health, Centerplan Development, Marcum and the City of New Haven jumping in.”

The program has already launched one full-time career and will ultimately do the same for many more as Promise begins to build its alumni base.

The first full-time job that was a result of the Fair came to Teodoro Garcia, a 2015 graduate of the University of Connecticut. After serving an extended internship at the Yale School of Management, he landed a finance post at the School of Medicine last fall.

Both of those departments participated in the Fair along with a number of other Yale departments, such as the Art Gallery, the Center for British Art, Information Technology Services, Human Resources, Graduate Housing, Finance and the Police Department.

Another Promise graduate — Erving Xochipiltecatl (pictured) — was handling a new role at the Fair, working the table as a full-time employee of New Haven Public Schools, which plans to employ current Scholars this summer. Like Garcia, he was among New Haven Promise’s first class of graduates, earning his diploma from Quinnipiac University in the spring.

In addition to the school district and New Haven Promise, several other businesses and organizations were looking to hire, including Teach For America, Southern Connecticut State University, Berchem Moses & Devlin Law, and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

Melton and Yale’s Community Hiring Director Chris Brown (pictured) talked to the hiring managers after the event and they showed great enthusiasm for the Scholars they met and many discussed recruiting additional departments, businesses and organizations in the future.

A number of other agencies are expected to open positions in the coming months and the hope is to have more than 100 internships this summer.

Promise’s Big Bang Turns 10

February 27, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

Roz Wiggins of the Yale School of Management offered the title “The Big Bang” for a segment about the Kalamazoo Promise in her Cities of Promise town hall case study last November at PromiseNet.

“It wasn’t the first place-based scholarship, but Kalamazoo was the first program of its kind that made a citywide commitment and it caught the country’s attention,” she wrote.

That “Big Bang” occurred at a city board of education meeting on Nov. 10, 2005, and now folks in Kalamazoo have rolled out the activities in a yearlong celebration of its 10th anniversary. The Kalamazoo Promise — which expects to enroll about new 500 recipients each fall — has awarded more than $60 million in anonymously-funded scholarships, leading to more than 1,000 degrees.

“We may never know those donors’ names, but we know how they helped bring this community together and how you’ve embraced their Promise not just as a gift to be appreciated, but a responsibility to be fulfilled,” President Barack Obama told the 2010 graduating class of Kalamazoo Central High. “We know how they have helped inspire an entire generation of young people here in Kalamazoo to imagine a different future for themselves.”

Under the theme “The Promise We Keep,” the events leading up to a formal anniversary include a series of community conversations focused on the barriers which have kept Promise-eligible folks from utilizing the award, a downtown community celebration in August and a return of PromiseNet, the national conference which was established in Kalamazoo.

“We knew that The Promise was a gift that would change lives,” Von Washington Jr., executive director of Kalamazoo Promise community relations, told Alex Mitchell of the Kalamazoo Gazette. “What we’ve learned over the past decade is that it’s a gift that can transform a community, but only to the extent that the community steps forward to make sure The Promise is kept for everyone.”

One City’s Promise

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

One of the toughest things about a Promise program is that — in the end — the funders and the program administrators have little control on the return on the investment. Promise folks can identify, celebrate, monitor, support, counsel, engage, mentor and advocate for the scholars, but it is the business community that controls the hiring. And without certainty of that, it is hard to fully grasp the ability of a Promise program to assist in the “economic development” mission that most programs champion. Continue reading →