Welcome to New York State PROMISE, Emerging Voices. Today's topic is Motivated to Succeed. Schenectady High School sophomore Lakiyah is excited about getting involved in the world of work. PROMISE case manager Denise Hamedy and service provider Deb Hollner have been helping Lakiyah to develop new skills so she can pursue what she's passionate about. Lakiyah enjoys working with children, so that's where the PROMISE team is focused.
Lakiyah is actually one of the first students that we recruited in PROMISE. Her mother was very interested in developing a path so that she could start working part time in the summers.
She has the motivation. She wants to succeed. She wants to work. She's got a lot of family support as well, which is great.
She completed, the CPP, which is Career Planning and Prep, because she was very shy and she didn't say too much, so I felt that she needed to develop soft skills so that she could navigate her way through an employment situation. And then, she took off on her own. With Deb's help, she applied last year for the Schenectady Job Training Agency, and she got accepted, and she indicated to them she wanted to work with children, and she was only 14 at the time, so they put her at Central Park working the paddleboats and helping the kids get on to the paddleboats. She just did beautifully there.
We had to put the life jackets on the adults too just, like, just in case if the paddleboat would tip over or something like that. So, like, we would get life jackets for all of them.
The next experience Lakiyah had was an unpaid work experience at a day care center.
I would help with snacks and, snacks, and then I'll help clean up, and bring them outside, and watch them.
The PROMISE team helped to work through transportation issues so Lakiyah could get to the day care center. She is so motivated that even when she couldn't get a ride one time, she made sure to solve the problem herself.
She got herself there. She went home after school, got her bike, rode her bike there, and got herself there. And I, you know, I commended her for that. That's a lot of responsibility for a 15 year old.
She's really grasped and taken advantage of a lot of the services that PROMISE offers. Down the road, I see her with financial literacy training to show her how to set things up if she wanted to start her own little day care or babysitting service and be able to manage her monies and set it up like a business. That would be something that we could pursue when she gets a little older.
The New York State PROMISE Project produced this video under a cooperative agreement with the 7