Program Places Hundreds Of Low-Income Students In Paid Internships
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Over two hundred Minnesota high school students are officially drafted as of Thursday morning.
The 233 students have been drafted to work for 55 Twin Cities Corporations as paid interns.
These kids are from low-income backgrounds and they now have a huge jump start to their futures. To emphasize the enormity of the event, the ceremony mimicked the NFL draft.
Excitement was in the air, and a large crowd of family members and friends were there to support the draftees.
The program is called Genesys Works and they place kids in corporate internships for a year, often in the IT field.
The students are drafted by 55 companies, including, but not limited to, Target, Medtronic, Caribou, St. Jude, Life Touch.
Business consulting company Accenture got a new class of four. Mary Fitzpatrick works with the company.
"The energy that these students bring to our organization is just fantastic, and the professionalism," Fitzpatrick said. "To see that potential and to see that amount of energy, it's just inspiring."
Zabiba Sameru just graduated from last year's Accenture class.
"Coming from a low income family, sometimes we think our future is not that bright. We don't have all that, we don't have this, we tend to give up. But having this opportunity has made me realize that I need to push myself," Sameru said.
This fall, Sameru will be attending the University of Minnesota and hopes to go into HR since now she has a solid knowledge of the field. She also really hopes to go back to Accenture after college.
Ninety-six percent of the supervisors said they would recommend their interns to others. And in 2014, 100 percent of these interns were accepted to college.