About YouthForce
YouthForce is a Seattle area 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing low income and minority high school students with mentored internships and experiential learning activities that develop the teamwork, leadership and career skills they need to navigate adolescence, succeed in college and prosper as young adults.
YouthForce's Career Internship Program has provided 236 low income and minority teens with over 97,000 hours of paid, career-focused internships . Career Internships provide long term after school and summer internships in professional companies allowing teens to develop professional networks, career experience, mentors and role models that encourage teens to reach for their highest ambitions.
Our 2007 Career Internship partners include ZymoGenetics Inc., Expeditors International, Amazon.com, Vulcan Inc., Stoel Rives, KPMG, Popcap Games, Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Flow Corp., the Experience Music Project and other sector leaders.
92% percent of our interns have met or exceeded the performance, academic and commitment goals established by themselves, their intern site, and YouthForce.
Our TeamWork Internship Program, hosted by First and Goal Inc. and the Seattle Seahawks, has provided 161 low income teens with over 12,000 hours of core skills experience. TeamWork Internships cultivate the communication, teamwork, personal responsbility and customer service skills essential in school and life, and prepares teens for our more intensive Leadership and Career Internships
Since 2006, our Leadership Internship Program, has provided 34 teens with advanced skills organizing and running the TeamWork Internship Program and supporting the operation of YouthForce as business leaders, peer counselors, researchers and webmasters.
Our Inspirational Interview Series offers small groups of teens the chance meet with community leaders within their career interests. Personal conversations allow teens to learn how others have overcome obstacles, developed their goals, and achieved their success.
Local leaders interviewed include Governor Gary Locke, Costco Wholesale Chairman and co-Founder, Jeffrey Brotman, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, Expeditors International CEO Peter Rose and many others.
YouthForce believes that all youth have great potential. The power of YouthForce rests in our ability to connect the critical players in the youth employment challenge – students, parents, high schools, youth programs and employers –to accomplish what none can do alone.
By engaging schools, business and teens, YouthForce provides teens with:
- the coaching they need to develop a history of academic and extracurricular achievement,
- role models and mentors to build personal and professional networks,
- career education to explore interests and opportunities,
- income to support college and family finances, and
- relevant internships that motivate their talent and dreams without limits.
For low income and minority teens whose opportunities are often limited by factors such as poverty, lack of role models, or networks, YouthForce’s internships demonstrate that their dreams are achievable, that adults care about them, and that they hold the power to succeed in any path they choose.
YouthForce is a social entrepreneurial staffing service providing businesses a high value, low cost solution to the routine office and clerical needs that accumulate during the day. Our private-sector recruiting, screening and payroll services remove the performance and liability concerns associated with youth employment. Our proven sequence of goal setting, coaching, leadership trainings and recruiting talent result in risk free, productive, inspiring and employable teens who can perform any routine office duty to allow staff to focus on their high productivity work. For high achieving low income teens without social networks, these professional work experiences provide a way out of the service economy into career relevant jobs that offer experience and role models they need to achieve their greatest ambition and potential.
Teens serve internships with some of the most innovative and successful employers across a wide range of professional fields in the Seattle area, including ZymoGenetics Inc., Amazon.com, First and Goal/Qwest Field, Expeditors International, the Experience Music Project, PopCap Games, Stoel Rives LLC, Wong Doody, Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Helsell Fetterman and many others.
Collectively, our program has unique 360° impact in the community. Through YouthForce teens gain valuable career experience and mentored relationships while earning money for family needs and college; employers enjoy the benefits of having motivated, enthusiastic teens working in administrative support positions while receiving the goodwill associated with giving back to the community; schools gain internships that help students apply their learning; foundations impact the success and diversity of our communities’ leaders of tomorrow, and YouthForce earned income supports program development and sustainability.
YouthForce is operated by an experienced team with more than 25 years collective experience in youth employment, youth development, and with new enterprise start-ups.
Jeffrey Stein, the Executive Director, holds an M.Ed with a Principal's Certificate, has been a teacher and employment counselor and has worked in several School-to-work Programs.
2007 Board of Directors:
Tom Anderson CFO Apariant, Past Chair WA Staffing Assoc.
Vipin Duggal Attenex Corp, Strategic Account Manager
Sara Hasan McAdams, Wright, Ragen, Equity Analyst
Edward Lee Key Bank, Business Banking (Vice Chair)
Tammy Young Moss Adams, Human Resources Director
For more information, please contact Executive Director, Jeffrey Stein at 206.344.3310 or email at Jeffrey@youthforce.com