Albany high school student Jewel is a New York State PROMISE student. Her goal is to become a social worker and work in the child protective services unit. Through PROMISE, she has been building up her skill-sets with volunteer and work experiences. Now she's working with children and pursuing her career goals, a win-win.
I just love working with kids. At first I wanted to be a babysitter but then I'd be like -- I just want to help kids out, be a social worker.
She's always wanted to be a social worker. That has never changed since I met her. And I think the traits she has, she would be a great social worker because she's very caring. She's very helpful, and she enjoys working with, you know, kids and the elderly.
Jewel wants to work in social services with some of our most vulnerable children. Brittany Rowlinson is an employment and intake specialist at Wildwood in the capital region. Brittany helps connect Jewel with work experiences.
Jewel came to us at the start of the PROMISE program and we started to work with her on finding what her interests were and her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. So we helped her get connected in the community with an assessment -- or tryout, we like to call them a tryout, just to tryout a job and see what it's like to kind of do all the hands-on kind of thing. She started out in Albany at an after school program, working with kids and trying that out.
I helped the kids do homework. I helped make some -- sometimes I helped make food for the kids. I helped -- some of the kids really liked me. Some of them would always follow me around and I used to always play basketball with some of the boys. They really liked me playing basketball with them. And I used to just play, like Play-Doh with them all the time. They just really liked me down there.
She did very well at the opportunity, so much so the business wanted her to come back as a regular on her free time if she wanted to volunteer, so she did really well with that. And then from there, she kind of was at a place where she wanted to have a paid job, you know, that was where her goal was.
Jewel took the initiative and applied and was hired by McDonald's. Jewel plans to continue to work at McDonald's, which is helping to develop her work ethic and ability to handle a variety of people. She'll also continue going to school and has been a member of a track team at Albany High School. Additionally, her volunteer and work experiences are helping her build skills that she'll need in the future.
I like my job, it's fun to work there. And I like the people, our managers.
She was very independent from the beginning, had a lot of skills, and we've kind of been there to walk alongside her for that journey, you know, as she needed support. And we're really developing what's called the soft skills needed for our life, you know, to take us to wherever we're going long-term. So for Jewel, you know, if social work is in her -- is part of her dream long-term, she's really learning the skill of working with the public, you know, working with different people that come in that maybe might be difficult. So learning the conflict resolution skills, you know, developing patience, working with, you know, different ages, you know, and the public coming in.
Jewel has come a long way and the person that she's becoming is just great to see. It's great to see her transition from where she was before to where she is now and where she's progressing to. It's just a great feeling and it's nice to know that PROMISE is part of that and I'm part of that change.
The New York State PROMISE project produced this video under a cooperative agreement with the US Department of Education.