A more pressing concern is with the rise of unemployment. With Gen Z workers nearly three times more likely to report losing their jobs than their older counterparts amid COVID-19, outlined below are three initiatives, that are helping interns and high schoolers stay employed and jump start their careers amid the pandemic.
Ensuring Interns Get Paid and Keep Learning in Columbus
With this example, Rev1 Ventures in Columbus, OH, is helping startups maintain their paid internship programs with its first Innovation Internship Program. Rev1, which provides seed stage venture capital funding, launched this initiative through a grant from the Ohio Third Frontier. It’s reimbursing companies for up to two-thirds of their interns’ salaries (up to $8,000 per intern), while providing ongoing support to help the companies manage the intern hiring, placement and onboarding process. In addition, Rev1 is providing training support for the interns and connecting them to the local startup and innovation community for long-term career building.
Providing Tuition-Free College Courses to Help Gen Z “JumpStart” Their Careers
Amazon Web Services and Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) are partnering to offer online summer courses in cloud computing, providing high school seniors a “JumpStart” to their careers in tech. NVCC is using money from the federal government’s stimulus package to launch a summer schedule of tuition-free online classes for 70,000 qualified Northern Virginia high school students. Amazon recently broke ground on construction for HQ2 in Northern Virginia, a 2.1 million square foot mixed-use project that will include two 22-story towers in Pentagon City.
Helping Next-Gen Apprentices Get Paid to Code in Charlotte
Carolina Fintech Hub in Charlotte, NC is launching its first Youth Technology Apprenticeship Camp (YTAC) for high school seniors. Twenty apprentices will receive training to become full-stack developers, learn about esports, coding and other STEM careers, and they’ll earn $10 an hour throughout the month-long program. At the completion of the camp, apprentices will be pre-selected candidates for the Carolina Fintech Hub WIN Program, which offers six additional months of coding training and leads to a guaranteed job in the field. Hiring partners include Bank of America, Truist, Ally, EY and more.
