I went to a conference today on how industry and higher-education entities can collaborate better to prepare students for the jobs that companies want to fill. There was a big crowd, and among the speakers were U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy.
I was especially pleased to hear panel member Gerald Chertavian and catch up with what his nonprofit has accomplished in the past few years.
Starting in college, Chertavian volunteered as a Big Brother, and the experience had a profound effect on him. After he went to Harvard Business School, launched a company, and sold it, he decided to invest in helping motivated youths aged 18-24 who lacked the money, networks, or opportunity to get a good education or decent job.
So he founded Year Up. He built on his list of corporate contacts to make internships a key part of a training program that ended in jobs.
Interested young people had to have a high school diploma or GED and demonstrate through the application process (which involves getting references) that they are serious. They earn a stipend during a year of training in either financial-industry or tech skills. They learn workplace behavior and business communication. At the same time they get college credits at an affiliated school, which most students decide to put toward a degree after their year in the program. Companies have found the Year Up youths invaluable, and some are changing their HR requirements to allow in more people without a bachelor’s already in hand.
At the conference, Chertavian acknowledged that in spite of having helped 5,000 students over a decade through Year Up programs around the country, the organization was not big enough to achieve its ambition of a major impact on the opportunity divide. To scale up, he said, Year Up is partnering first with a college in Baltimore that will use the approach. It hopes to keep expanding the new model after Baltimore.
There are a lot of great You Tube videos that might interest you — some about the Year Up program, some about Chertavian, some about the students. Here is one.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
This is so, so encouraging. I’m so impressed by both people like Chertavian and the folks in the video. Thanks for this piece of good news.
There seems to be enough good stuff like this going around to make one hopeful. It’s interesting that the day before I heard Chertavian, I watched on Netflix “A Small Act,” which is in some ways the same story, but taking place in Kenya. And in watching “A Small Act,” I was reminded of the film “Waiting for Superman,” which takes place mostly in Harlem. All these stories have in common the notion that the problems are daunting but that if you are at least helping some people, you can turn their world around.