October 21, 2019
Student Job Shadow Program Launched
The Red River Regional Council (RRRC) has partnered with North Valley Career and Technology Center (NVCTC) and their North Valley Extended School Project (ESP) to provide opportunities for students and families during out of school time over the next three years.
The objectives of this partnership include:
- Retain youth/millennials in our rural communities.
- Strengthen relationships between students, schools, local businesses and manufacturers.
- Expose youth to the wide variety of entrepreneurship and career opportunities available in rural northeastern ND.
- Increase awareness of early career exposure events and programs among parents, educators and community leaders.
Through this partnership, every NVCTC student in grades 9-12 will have the opportunity to job shadow in the program area in which he/she is enrolled. Maggie Suda, Developer with the RRRC and Mike Hanson, Director of NVCTC launched the program on September 23 with the students. They watched a video on job shadowing, received a job shadow handbook and will be taking a survey to identify what they are interested in and where they would like to job shadow.
Suda is helping identify local businesses that are interested in hosting job shadows. So, far there are 18 participating businesses with more than 80 different career opportunities for the students to try. If a student would like to job shadow with a business, not on the list, Suda will reach out and see if they are interested in participating. If your business is interested, please call Suda at 701-352-3550 or email her at maggie@redriverrc.com.
According to Hanson, “The North Valley Extended School Project received funding to cultivate a new, innovative and highly skilled workforce by helping strengthen partnerships in order to expose students and parents to an array of career opportunities in northeast ND and supporting the 21st Century Workforce Main Street ND pillar. We are excited these partnerships provide expanded opportunities such as job shadowing.”
Suda added, “We are so fortunate to have a facility like NVCTC led by a forward-thinking Director and staff. I know many people, including myself who would have loved to have had the opportunity to job shadow in high school. These students have an incredible opportunity to try out as many careers as they would like before they even graduate.”
