The teen unemployment rate reached a distressing 20.9 percent in March, according to Next Economy (a joint initiative between the Atlantic and National Journal) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is especially devastating for kids from poor neighborhoods, who need work and already face significant employment barriers.
But the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC) helps fight the problem by placing around 3,000 public high school students in summer jobs that help them develop the skills and connections needed to secure a job after graduation. PIC is a non-profit that has been around for 35 years.
Rayford Laconte, an 18-year-old resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts, is one of the students who found work through PIC. Last summer, PIC garnered him an internship at Genzyme, a biotech company in Boston. After the summer ended, Genzyme offered Laconte a part-time, after-school position with the company, which he happily accepted. After graduation, Laconte plans to work at Genzyme again over the summer to save money for college.
PIC places students at organizations and corporations all over the city, from Genzyme to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Joseph McLaughlin, PIC’s research and evaluation director, told Next Economy that the organization’s private-sector commitment is unique — and especially useful.
“We’re introducing urban high school students to professional environments. That has a payoff to employers as well, since they want to grow their future workforce.”
Throughout the school year, PIC also works to help students by offering resume and mock interview workshops, as well as advising students how to dress professionally and fit into an office environment.
Now that summer’s almost here, PIC and other organizations like it are especially important. Students in Boston and around the country who need work and aren’t sure how to get it could benefit from more programs like this one.
Tag: Boston
Hundreds Trek the Boston Marathon Route to Raise Suicide Awareness
Running a marathon takes a lot of courage and commitment. And so does marching the same distance while carrying a 50 pound backpack.
On March 29, hundreds of people did just that along the 26.2 mile Boston marathon route to raise awareness about the disturbingly high suicide rate among veterans. Sadly, an average of 22 veterans a day kill themselves, and the marchers are determined to reduce that number. Some turned the trek into a “ruck march” — carrying heavy backpacks like those servicemen and women wear, while others wore tutus and one accountant wore a gas mask, according to Todd Wallack of the Boston Globe.
Carlos Arredondo, the cowboy-hatted good samaritan who sprang into action to help victims of the Boston Marathon bombing last year, was on hand to support the marchers. His son Alexander was a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004, and his son Brian committed suicide in 2011. The cause is “very close to our hearts and our family,” he told Wallack.
Participants set a goal to raise $75,000 for Active Heroes, a Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit building a retreat for veterans and their families (the same charity one father and son team are hiking the Appalachian trail to support). Michelle Lyons, who served in Afghanistan, told Wallack that for veterans, “There is so much help out there — they just don’t know how to get to it.” As for the suicide rate among veterans, she said, “Hopefully we can bring that number down to zero.”
With the determination of these marathon marchers, veterans’ despair should be turned into hope.
MORE: This Father and Son are Hitting the Trail to Prevent Veteran Suicide
Can Big Data Reshape City Governments?
When it comes to the nebulous term “big data,” U.S. cities are finally leaning in.
Though aggregating data and statistics seems to be a fool-proof trick to understanding the source of, and resolving urban problems like crime, traffic, pollution, and things of the like, city leaders have been slow to plug in.
“There was a time — the past 20 years, actually — when two large computer monitors in the mayor’s office would have been as welcome as a Walmart executive pitching a store in Boston,” Michael B. Farrell wrote for the Boston Globe last week. “Longtime occupant Thomas M. Menino famously shunned e-mail and didn’t even allow a PC to clutter his desk.”
How can a mayor get a full picture of his or her jurisdiction without even an e-mail address? Exactly. That’s not to say that Boston’s leadership has been completely in the dark, though. For years, Boston and other cities have been pored over crime, traffic, and potholes statistics to find areas for improvement. This kind of big data has been useful for enacting new laws and determining their effectiveness.
But Martin J. Walsh, Boston’s new mayor as of January 6, has embraced big data head on and brought it right onto his desktop. He has two 46-inch screens — called dashboards — that sit atop a metal stand, which display data about all things Boston — from the percentage of school buses arriving on schedule to how many potholes were filled in the past week to the number of calls flooding the city’s 24-hour hot line.
This way, he gets real-time reports from his city’s departments.“It’s really a way to have the department heads push to deliver better services to the city of Boston,” Walsh told the Globe. Watching his social media streams and hotline activity allows him to witness what issues need addressing right away and to see what’s working.
The dashboards originated with former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who pushed his staff to use computers to discover previously overlooked issues and find solutions to ones that had long proved frustrating. The Globe found an instance in which this was particularly useful:
In one case, New York officials analyzed building data to determine which were more susceptible to fires, and then dispatched inspectors to those properties. Boston has undertaken similar efforts to target negligent landlords and to cut down on traffic congestion.
With Walsh’s term still in its infancy, his big data push will take time to truly manifest itself. But he has huge software and technological improvements to thank for enabling his mission. In a way, the true potential of big data couldn’t have been accessed during Menino’s long term, anyway. But today’s smartphones, powerful computers, and evermore effective data platforms make it easier to track trends. Even more exciting is the possibility of predictive data services, which may able to detect crimes before they happen.
Until then, Boston, along with other cities, as Government Technology outlines, may help lead the way in hacking into city problems — and how to fix them, stat.
Can Writing Poetry Make Better Doctors?
With teaching gigs at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, you would’t think Dr. Rafael Campo would have time for much else. But he’s also a poet with six published volumes to his credit, and he’s on a mission to combine his two passions. Campo believes teaching medical students to study and write poetry can imbue their work with more compassion, balancing the emphasis he feels medical schools place on teaching students to distance themselves from their patients. Campo runs a writing workshop every week for students and residents. “Sometimes facts become all-consuming in our work as docs and we may risk losing sight of some of the truths of the experience of illness, particularly from the perspective of our patients,” Campo said in a recent workshop attended by Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour. Campo described a typical moment of loss that he witnesses in his practice: “The family is sitting by the bedside. The patient hasn’t survived the arrhythmia. Don’t we still have a role as healers there?” Poet or not, it’s hard to argue with that.
MORE: Here’s a Gang You’ll Want Your Kids to Join
If You Want to Hire Someone to Help the Homeless, Why Not the Formerly Homeless?
A program in Boston is taking formerly-homeless veterans and employing them, sending them onto the streets to help out the homeless veterans who have not yet been as fortunate. The strategy is helping to gain the trust of Boston’s homeless veterans, who are more receptive to advice given by people who have been there. As a result of this and other efforts in Boston to get homeless veterans off the streets, there has been a 15 percent drop in the number of homeless vets on any given night to 458. According to the AP, Boston is considering doubling the size of the program in the coming year.
How Shoveling a Little Snow Is Doing Big Things to Make This Community Better
A winter wonderland can be a beautiful backdrop for the holiday season. But when it snows, ‘tis also the season for major issues of senior safety across the nation. As the temperature falls, injury risk for older people climbs. Joseph Porcelli’s Boston Snow Crew fights back against a big piece of that risk by using online tools to connect older, ill, and disabled people with volunteers to shovel their walkways and driveways. Porcelli’s idea started as a local project but quickly spread into a far-ranging network, and the effort to make safety a little bit easier has turned into a major community-building initiative. Neighbors who were strangers are now better connected, building “extremely profound relationships on both sides of the equation,” as one leader reports. “What’s so nice about it is that it’s easy,” said one participant. “When you make it easy for people to do the right thing, things get done.”
How Tennis Helps These Boston Students Graduate High School
Tenacity was founded by Ned Eames, a management consultant and tennis pro who wanted to give more opportunities to inner-city students. The organization is built on a unique collaboration between athletics and academics. Tenacity staff work with teachers and school administrators to create individual study plans to help students in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and journaling, while the tennis program gets students active, and teaches them discipline, confidence and social skills. More than 95% of Tenacity students graduate from high school, versus Boston’s average of 70%. Also, 80% of Tenacity students go to college. In the next five years, Tenacity will serve 2,000 students, expand its academic support to math, and partner with schools to create multi-purpose spaces to increase capacity in its tennis instruction. Sound academics, life skill development, field trips and athletics is clearly a winning combination.
You Won’t Believe Where These Bostonians Grow Their Vegetables
Two guys from Boston are taking farming to a whole new level: stackable shipping containers that can grow produce anywhere. Freight Farms sets up boxes with LEDs, climate control systems and hydroponics, turning them into modular farms capable of producing 900 heads of leafy greens per week. It’s a one acre farm in a 320-square-foot box!
An 87-Year-Old World War II Vet Made a Promise at 19 to Help Someone Every Day
When Lou Pasquale was a 19-year-old machine gunner in World War II, he was badly injured when an Okinawa ammunition dump exploded. He prayed to God to spare his life for his mother, and promised he would help someone every day of his life from then on. After the war, Lou managed a bowling alley in Boston, and always looked after the kids who played there, giving them free shoes and games, driving them to school, counseling them and helping their families.
And almost seventy years later, Lou continues to keep his promise. For the past seven years, the vet has been raising money through candy bar sales and an annual golf tournament to buy specially-equipped vans to take injured veterans to their medical appointments. The Massachusetts Disabled American Veterans has been able to purchase 19 vans because of Lou’s efforts. That’s a lot of mileage out of one long-ago promise.
Boston Students Help Low-Income Families Get Online
Students at Northeastern University have formed a partnership with Comcast to help low-income Boston residents access the Internet. Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, which offers broadband access for $9.95 a month to any family with a child who qualifies for free lunch, recently marked its third anniversary, and has helped a million people across the country get online. As a part of the program, low-income families can purchase a computer for less than $150. In the coming year, Northeastern students will staff digital literacy training programs, and Comcast will publicize its low-income broadband access program throughout Boston.