On Saturday, July 21, students gathered to celebrate their graduation from the Youth Employment Series (YES) Academy, LightHouse’s employment readiness program. Students ages 16 to 24 attended the month-long immersive program, which aims to build confidence through learning first-hand knowledge, collaborating, identifying strengths and interests and gaining a sense of direction through interactive work-based experiences.
Students organized, prepared and served a three-course dinner for the occasion. The graduates looked sharp in semi-formal attire that they selected and styled in conjunction with a professional attire seminar and a group outing to Macy’s.
Meet YES Academy 2018
This year’s YES Academy students each had their own immersive job experience in the community, commuting to and from work while staying in the residential facilities at the LightHouse’s downtown San Francisco headquarters. We caught up with them at the YES family banquet this weekend. Their names are listed alongside the company that they worked at this summer, along with quotes from each student about their experience.
Kyle – Center for Independent Living
“I did some inventorying of random assistive technology tools that they had. I also helped administer a presentation at senior retirement housing, where we showed off some assistive technology tools that might be able to help them.”
Jose – LightHouse Sirkin Center
“You need to manage your time, [otherwise] stuff starts to pile up.”
Andy – LightHouse Sirkin Center
“I packaged toilet paper to send off to war-torn countries. That was a very good experience.”
Erick – LightHouse Sirkin Center
“I actually had to do different stuff including reworking, sorting items, and then I had to do some machinery work.”
Santiago – Call of the Sea
“I went through the entire website catalog, all of the pages, and I looked at what was accessible, what was not accessible, what was somewhat accessible and needed to be improved. I wrote a business report with the details as to what needed to be improved and what the best way would be to improve it.”
Steven – Call of the Sea
“Me and my partner Santiago just worked on business reports, analyzing the company’s website and seeing how we can make it more accessible and what next steps the company needs to do to make it possible for blind or visually impaired people to access their website easier.”
Kayla – Roxie Theater
“It’s motivated me to send my resume and apply for other jobs.”
Richard – Roxie Theater
“I worked at the cash register. I wasn’t good at it but I kept at it, and I got better, and now it’s not a weakness anymore.”
Looking for more information or to get involved in LightHouse Youth programs? Email youth@lighthouse-sf.org
