Summer Bridge

Request to support NYC youth through Summer Bridge 2020

July 08, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Summer Bridge 2020

We’re writing to ask that your company participate in the Summer Bridge program, which gives NYC youth crucial career and educational opportunities. Needless to say, this feels more important now than ever. It’s designed to be a light lift — details are below. NYC’s Summer Youth Employment Program is the nation’s largest youth employment program, historically connecting NYC low-income youth between the ages of 14 and 24 with career exploration opportunities and paid work experience each summer. In response to COVID-19 and the program’s status, 50+ nonprofits have come together to design and support the Summer Bridge program for 2020. The goal is to provide NYC students with city and state funded professional workplace experiences in the tech industry (and beyond!). It’s also a unique opportunity at an important moment through which companies and their employees can directly support NYC youth from across all 5 boroughs. The Summer Bridge organizers will serve 35,000 youth this summer. The program prioritizes opportunities for low-income, justice-involved, foster care, runaway and homeless, NYCHA residents, and young adults from communities hit hardest by the pandemic throughout New York City.Student interns will be grouped in cohorts of 15-20 students and participate in all-remote workplace challenge projects for 10-20 total hours (2-4 hours per week for 4 weeks.) The cohorts begin August 3 and finish the week of August 24. Summer Bridge and its non-profit partners will match student interns with companies, compensate students with a stipend, and manage day-to-day-student relationships.

The employer ask:

  • Design a “workplace challenge” for students based on a real business need or problem in one of 4 areas: product, engineering, marketing, or design. (Workplace challenge templates and curriculum can be found here.)

  • Recruit employee volunteers to meet virtually once a week for 4 weeks with small groups (15-20 students) for hour-long interactions. Ideally, each volunteer would see 2-3 groups a week and/or a company or division within a company would host multiple cohorts.

  • Offer feedback to students at a virtual final workplace challenge presentation.

More information can be found here.