The Metro Youth YMCA serves as a lead partner for Grow Detroit’s Young Talent (GDYT), connecting 250 youth ages 14-24 to paid summer internships and career development opportunities.
What is Y Careerwise and Grow Detroit’s Young Talent?
The purpose of GDYT is to provide young adults ages 14-24 with real world work experiences. Our aim to provide relevant learning opportunities that will assist young adults with developing solid basic work skills and with developing realistic career plans.
Y Careerwise has two tiers:
Career Camp:
Our younger youth ages 14-15 (9th -10th grade) will participate in virtual career development daily workshops and industry tours for six weeks from July 3 – August 11, 2023. Students are paid by reaching weekly benchmarks presented in the virtual learning workshops and assignments.
Students who attend:
- Learn Basic Employability Skills
- Develop a Career plan
- Learn introductory financial literacy skills
- Plan and provide a community service project
- Explore careers
- They tour various businesses including field trips
- Attend career speaker presentations
- Conduct online research
- Entrepreneur program
Internships:
Youth ages 16-21, based on their career interests are placed at local businesses to work. These placements are considered YMCA worksite partners and designate an employee to be an internship supervisor. The students attain their work responsibilities and finalize their work schedule under the guidance of their internship site supervisor. From July 3 – August 11, youth can work up to 20-25 hours weekly for 6 weeks – totaling a max of 120 hours.
Where do Y Careerwise interns work?
Placements have included City of Detroit departments, health offices, restaurants, retail business, various k-8 public school academies, YMCA childcare centers and more. It is our goal that after their internship, partners would be able to hire those young people.
Partner Opportunities:
- Conduct tour of your company and share your knowledge about how to succeed in your business and how your business operates
- Serve as a career speaker. Share your story of your journey to career success
- Serve as an internship worksite
- Serve as an interviewer: interview students to give them practice mastering the interview process