Goodwill Summer Youth Program puts teens, young adults to work

For more than 80 Battle Creek area youth, the Goodwill Summer Youth Program has made the bleak summer job market a bit less intimidating.

The program, which receives its funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, targets youth from the ages of 16 to 24 and trains them for employment. After training began June 27, the first wave of 76 employees began working July 5 and will continue for eight weeks.

"We're right on schedule of where we wanted to be," said Jerry Mainstone, VP of Workforce Development at Goodwill. "Actually, we're probably 10 to 15 youth being placed ahead of where we wanted to be."

Mainstone's goal was to employ 80 youth this summer and the program has almost already surpassed that number.

"Our goal was to get 80 youth employed, and if that required 80 worksites, then that's what we would have done," Mainstone said. "But we were able to find some worksites that took multiple kids because they had multiple departments to put them in."

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20110715/NEWS01/107150309/Goodwill-Summer-Youth-Program-puts-teens-young-adults-work