7/2/2010 Summer Youth Webinar Attracts Hundreds from Across the Nation

In June, 2010, KeyTrain sponsored a webinar presentation of best practices for Summer Youth programs.  Hundreds of people registered for the webinar and tuned in to hear success stories from practitioners in Oklahoma and Tennessee.  These notable programs chose to focus on the more local aspects of their programs – the parts that only they could do – while relying on proven tools for more global aspects of the program like career readiness preparation and measurement. Among these tools were the National Career Readiness Certificate and Career Ready 101, both highly ranked by the DOL as valuable tools for America’s job seekers. This approach proved valuable for programs in Tennessee and Oklahoma among others.

In order to serve 672 students in 7 counties, Local Workforce Investment Area 12 in Tennessee designed their program in blocks, using Career Ready 101 in the first week and last week with worksite experience concentrated in the middle weeks. Each student was tested with WorkKeys Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information in order to allow them the opportunity to achieve a National Career Readiness Certificate – which was a key in meeting measurement goals in career readiness as required by ETA.

The State of Oklahoma chose to make use of KeyTrain’s turnkey program, Career Ready 101, to tackle the training piece of their summer programs.  Jason George, Youth Program Coordinator at Oklahoma's Eastern Workforce Investment Board (EWIB) says, "The comprehensive, organized approach of Career Ready 101 gave us a jump start on training and allowed staff to focus on tasks that require local efforts – such as employer relations and community efforts."

Resources from the webinar, including the powerpoint and a recorded version of the session, are available at www.keytrainnews.com/SummerYouth.htm