My first job at a clothing store in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska taught me a great deal about the workplace, much of which I still use as an adult. In the midst of folding clothes and ringing up customers were important life lessons about business strategy, customer service and working with a supervisor.
Those who understand the importance of workplace etiquette and have it nurtured by others at an early age have a distinct advantage in life. Many will go on to build networks that will ultimately help them become the next generation of coaches, educators and accountants. Unfortunately, with high unemployment rates it has become harder and harder for youth -- especially those from working class families -- to obtain these essential skills as teenagers. This gap creates a deficit that can quickly lead to a lifetime of employment challenges. Simply put, youth without the advantage of learning soft skills and building networks early can quickly find themselves relegated to lower wage jobs and that can mean the difference between the ability to provide for a family or not later in life.
There are a variety of programs in this country that aim to support youth with employment and skills training. Community efforts that are well-supervised and structured provide a solid work experience and skills that are essentially building the first rung in the ladder that leads to a productive and rewarding work life.
Here in Omaha, we've partnered with two other local foundations, the university and city government to support a summer employment program for youth ages 15-18 with no prior work experience who live in the most impoverished neighborhoods. Paid $7.25 per hour, these teens spend their days working at public parks and area nonprofits on a variety of projects. On Fridays of each week, they focus on learning soft skills from community leaders who volunteer their time.
At the end of summer the youth in this program walk away not only having received a steady paycheck but, perhaps more importantly, they now have a solid job reference and the kind of practical experience that can lead to employment in the traditional job market.
While programs like this may appear costly at the outset, the benefits are immeasurable and last a lifetime. Instead of spending the endless days of summer hanging out in the neighborhood or watching TV, these youth had the opportunity to engage in teamwork, learn practical soft skills and give back to their community. The challenge for America is how to scale up local programs like this to keep greater numbers of young people off of the street by providing meaningful opportunities that will then lead to even greater prospects in the future.
If our country's leaders are truly interested in giving less of a hand out and more of a hand up, youth employment is an exceptional starting place. Whether its folding clothes or flipping burgers, job opportunities at an early age build the foundation upon which whole careers are built.
Youth employment: finding hidden talent in Greater Manchester
Another amazing thing, to empower Youth to turn around not just their life but to turn around their whole surrounding, is something called Yes+. I saw someone sharing his experience of this:
http://www.artoflivingsecrets.com/2012/07/breathe-magic-of-yes-part-1.html
Card check now!
Why a waiter refused my tip in Iceland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOrZSI0JVe0
Sell them now and have massive employment programs for teenagers and inner cities NOW!!!
August 17, 2012
Dan Stein: Obama Amnesty Floods Labor Market
"President Barack Obama's sweeping executive order on immigration that took effect on Wednesday is 'the hallmark of graft,' Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview," Newsmax.com reports.
"'The reason why it's so pernicious is that what he did he did six months before an election,' Stein tells Newsmax. 'He extended this work authorization, flooding the labor market with millions more people looking for jobs without any authority - and he did so for a two-year period essentially saying, 'You better re-elect me because the next administration might not extend the status.'"
Here's the etiquette we need: Workers should belong to unions, which should empower those workers to take control of their workplaces. Eventually, through extreme politics outside their workplaces, workers need to take complete control.
Working folks have been abused for too long. This is no time for good manners.
As far as injecting youth into the workforce is concerned, they don't belong in it. Our youth should spend their time educating and enjoying themselves--look at what they'll have to put up with once they become adult employees.
Business owners of the world unite!
"Together, as we began to think about the idea that people are connected in vast social networks, we realized that social influence does not end with the people we know. If we affect our friends, and they affect their friends, then our actions can potentially affect people we have never met."
In the book the study of social networks is presented, where it has been found that we each influence each other in profound ways, from what we buy, who we vote for, whether we are overweight or not, whether we are depressed or not, etc.
As a result, the main thing for the development of society today is to understand how and why we are connected and then to seek to improve our connections with one another to form a more cohesive and stable society, one that is built around the idea of mutual responsibility, given our interconnection and interdependence.
I would like to see our news filled with more of this type.