Young adults are finding it especially tough to secure employment in today’s job market. This spring has featured the highest unemployment for people ages 16-24 since the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The state of the U.S. job market raises the stakes for regional work force development programs across the country. Such programs connect young people with local employers to build lasting opportunities for both the student and the private organization, nonprofit or municipality they work for.

The equivalent in Baltimore is YouthWorks, which over the past 50 years has helped organize employment for thousands of local students, ages 14-21, said Mackenzie Garvin, director of the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. A combination of donations and public funds through this office pays the minimum wage salaries of YouthWorks participants, and helps pay the costs of administering the program. The Baltimore Banner employs interns through YouthWorks.

This year’s program had more than 13,000 applications for a little over 8,500 slots. In the final week of their five-week experience, three Baltimore students reflect on what they’ve gained through a summer in YouthWorks.

Tech with Code in the Schools

Elenge Germaine, 17, never liked cybersecurity before he took the Cyber Security course under Code in the Schools’ YouthWorks summer program. Now, interning in the program for a second year, he has declared it’s what he’d like to build his career in.

Germain has always loved tinkering with technology, whether it was old batteries and spare computer components as a kid growing up in Togo, West Africa, or developing games during the pandemic using a 24-hour coding lesson on YouTube, or exploring computer science classes as a high schooler at Baltimore City College.

He said the most important thing YouthWorks has given him is connections. Andrew Pham, co-executive director of Code in the Schools, is already a connection on Germain’s LinkedIn profile. Germain’s previous summer in the program, and the projects he completed by participating, helped land him a research internship in spring with the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, where he worked as part of a team to design a path-finding algorithm for drones.

Learning about how to tap into the communication between networked computers in the cybersecurity course has inspired Germain to develop a local digital system to store and protect his own data without relying on larger companies, such as Microsoft or Google.

Code in the Schools aims to equip students with the skills and tools they need to succeed in the tech workforce. This year, according to Pham, the program had more employers interested in hosting young people than young people to fill those roles.

Young people, no matter how capable, experience barriers in securing internships without having access to a network of employers, Pham said. “As a champion for Baltimore, we must commit to look to our young people first.”

Squash + School = Perseverance at Baltimore SquashWise

As a seventh grader, Chaaz Sweetney had no idea what squash was. Now, headed to St. Mary’s College of Maryland after five years with Baltimore SquashWise, he has realized how much practicing the sport at the organization has given him.

Baltimore SquashWise is a nonprofit that brings squash to Baltimore public school youths.

“In the game, it’s up to you how much you improve. The amount of effort you put into it will be the opportunities that you get out of it,” Sweetney said.

Abby Markoe, who co-founded SquashWise in 2007, said that part of what inspired her to build the organization was the power of the sport, which has ripple effects throughout life.

“As an individual sport, you are accountable to yourself, but you are also part of a team because you win as a team,” she said.

To Sweetney, these lessons reinforced ones he grew up with as a child of deaf parents. Although communicating with his family was a challenge, through learning ASL and reframing barriers as opportunities, Sweetney said he learned at home and school, and in squash, “to never let any of that bring you down and take away from your goal.”

Sweetney, a passionate trombone player in Baltimore City College’s marching band, anticipates leaving squash behind to focus on majoring in music and business management in college.

But he is looking forward to returning to SquashWise as an alum.

“It’s a home, not just for me but for everyone,” Sweetney said. “The coaches welcome us and push us to be our best selves.”

Digital Art with a Heart

The majority of Linzy Flores’ day is spent making art. At a desktop computer in a classroom at Art with a Heart’s Hampden location, she builds designs for tote bags, T-shirts and posters.

Art with a Heart is a Baltimore nonprofit that aims to improve lives and build community through the power of visual arts.

Flores was connected to their YouthWorks digital designer intern position through her involvement in Adelante Latina, a college and academic counseling organization aimed at improving Latina students’ access to college.

Flores is proud of her original T-shirt design displaying yellow and gold bees at work on a dripping honeycomb. To her, the design symbolizes the importance of saving the bees, and purchasers would be spreading that message.

Like the T-shirt, all of Flores’s artwork has a different meaning.

On a poster, Flores drew a brick wall and added a John Rohn quote telling us that the “good things we build end up building us.” She added the words “you build your life.”

Flores drew from the internship’s lessons in typography, or the art of using various fonts and colors to convey different messages, to shape her posters. One of her favorites looks as if it’s from the 1990s, with neon triangles and a flurry of different fonts, with all but one — the one she designed herself — crossed out.

Flores says the poster encourages her audience to “find your own style.”

“Copying others won’t fit you,” Flores said. It’s a message she says would have been helpful for her to know as a middle schooler growing up in the Parkville area in a family with Honduran roots.

Flores calls herself a “traditional artist,” relying on pen and a sketch book to create art. But developing skills in digital design will help her in school and beyond.

Learning to use the platform Canva as an artistic outlet, Flores said, will enable her to express herself and her message beyond words when speaking in public.

Flores thinks her time in YouthWorks will contribute to her goal of becoming an engineer by combining her artistic talents with a passion for building.

There’s one more important skill these students agree they’d honed over five weeks interning under YouthWorks: waking up early.