Program teaches teens interviewing skills, workplace habits and even pays them a little.
Courtney Adkins didn’t mind talking about her week-long summer job, but nothing was going to interrupt her from doing it.
“I’ve had a couple of job experiences, but this week is offering me a little bit more,” the 14-year-old rising sophomore said Wednesday. “This is a way to branch out from babysitting and working at my grandparents’ restaurant. This is kind of real-world working. Some aspects of it can be hard, but not really.”
Then she hesitated.
“You don’t mind if I keep stacking books while we talk, do you?”
Nope.
That’s her job, after all.
Courtney is a member of the Bluffton Boys & Girls Club’s Show Me the Money summer job program. After a formal interview process complete with resumes and business attire, she was hired for the week by the Bluffton Library. She’ll make $250 (through the Boys & Girls Club), learn a few new skills and have something to add to that resume.
“I really love this,” she said, sliding a copy of “Star Wars: Last of the Jedi” into its place on a shelf in the Bluffton Library’s kid section. “I want to be an author when I grow up and being around books is really fun. I always go to the library anyway, so it’s great to work here.”
Ann Rosen, Bluffton’s head librarian, is Courtney’s boss for the week. This is the library’s third year participating in the program.
“I think it’s great that these teens have been given this opportunity to get a taste of the business world, to get a real feel for what it’s like,” Rosen said.
Abigail Doodnaughtsingh, 16, has worked all week with Courtney at the library. While Courtney stocked shelves, Abigail helped younger kids sign up for reading programs.
“I have talked to other people who have done this (program) before and it has helped me learn to be better at working,” she said. “I like reading to kids. (The program) teaches you a lot. It helps you to be more open-minded about the workplace.”
It also teaches them about finances and checking, usually for about two and a half hours after they get off work. The kids work from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Shanira Hamilton, 16, and Kare Wrice, 15, have spent the past few days working — really, really working — at Bluffton’s Salvation Army Thrift Store. Hanging clothes for four hours isn’t easy, both girls said.
“But it’s just a great experience for me and it’s preparing me for my future in my future workplace,” Shanira said.
“It really helps to prepare you for your future. And I know how my mom feels now. It’s only four hours (for me) and my mom works 10 hours a day.”
“This is a way to branch out from babysitting and working at my grandparents’ restaurant. This is kind of real-world working. Some aspects of it can be hard, but not really.” Courtney Adkins
Career day at Sigler's
Members from Bluffton Boys & Girls Club learn about jobs in the culinary field.
Photos by Sarah Welliver, The Island Packet
Published Thursday, July 23, 2009
Members from Bluffton Boys & Girls Club learned about jobs in the culinary field thanks to a program called "Show Me the Money." The program was developed to give high school students exposure to careers and prepare them for adulthood.
Members learned about careers, how to manage money and had the opportunity to talk to professionals about the job skills needed. On Friday, members took a trip to Sigler's Rotisserie & Seafood in greater Bluffton.
The owner opened the doors for the members allowing them to experience careers and the operational details of a restaurant.
Students took on numerous numerous roles.
Club members planned a meal and followed it from the Members were in the kitchen preparing food while others were serving the food to members, who portrayed customers and got to taste the meal they planned and prepared.
Boys & Girls Club kids have fun while learning leadership at summer camp.
Patricia Simmonds is 8, but she knows what she wants to be when she grows up: A tennis player. A great one.
“I like tennis,” she said, simply, as Bluffton High School tennis coach Bob Brown served a ball her way.
Are you good, Patricia? “Yes.”
Are you great? “Kind of.”
“I like tennis because you have to use lots of energy. Exercise helps you feel better, feel great,” she said. “I hope to actually win a tennis championship some day.”
Maybe she will. Truth be told, it doesn’t so much matter. She learned her lesson well Thursday as part of the Bluffton Boys & Girls Club’s “Be Great” summer camp — you can do whatever you set your mind to.
“Our lesson for the (camp) is to be great. We’re just trying to find greatness in all our kids,” said club director Molly O. Smith. “We’re building character and developing leadership.”
The first week of camp was spent “getting to know themselves and respect other cultures, then being great through talent (shows and demonstrations),” Smith said. “They were stars. That was wonderful.
“This week they’re being great through leadership, finding ways to be great leaders and also exploring others who have been great leaders through our history.”
The last two weeks of the camp will push kids to “be great through philanthropy; they’re going to understand the importance of giving back,” she said. “By the end of summer we’re looking for some greatness out of our campers.”
In all, 268 Bluffton teens and children are participating in the camp, including several older teens in the Show-Me-the- Money summer work program. Thursday, those teens helped prepare four-course meals at Bluffton’s Sigler’s Restaurant in Sheridan Park.
“It’s a lot of work (to organize the doeverything camp), but I love it,” Smith said. “We set the bar really high and I think if they reach for it they’re going to come out shining like stars.”
On Wednesday, 15 10-year-olds under the leadership of Pedro Silva held a car wash at the Boys & Girls Club to raise money for the end-of-camp trip to Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla. The money will help those who couldn’t otherwise afford to go.
“It’s fun because I feel like I’m doing something to help other people and we’re raising money for a good cause,” said Alexa Daniels, 10. “But it’s really, really hot outside. It’s fun hanging out with my friends doing this because I’m getting soaking wet.”
Other optional items on the week’s camp schedule included golf lessons, skating, Laser Tag, skating while playing Laser Tag, singing, a dolphin cruise, tours of boxing arenas, martial arts, a slip-n-slide water thing, a meet-agator show at the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head Island, and “Swerve & Curve Mother/Daughter Fitness.”
Back to the tennis, where Boys & Girls Club social recreation director Jamal Gadson watched the 20 kids in the 10 a.m. program at Shell Hall fielding balls hit by Brown and famed Lowcountry tennis teacher Di Seggie:
“You gotta practice, everybody, everything,” Gadson said. “Everyone needs that practice to be better than what they are. That’s always our priority. … Experience counts. I always talk to them about limiting themselves. If you don’t take the time and initiative, even just trying, you’ll never know. You’ll never be great.”
Smith said more donations are needed to help send all the kids to Florida.
“They are doing car washes, they are making smoothies, they’re being really creative and having bake sales and garage sales and stuff,” she said.
But still, call 757-2845 if you can help.
“It really is a wonderful thing to watch them because they all come out (of summer camp) with the most wonderful experience,” Smith said.
BlufftIf a child was electricity, she could light trees on fire and blow stuff up just by touching it.
If he were the beach, he’d look alike for miles of fun and frolic, making it easy to get lost.
And if a child thought like a wild animal, biting would be a natural response to pure terror.
Bluffton Boys & Girls Club members ages 6 to 11 got to know their dangers Tuesday at Palmetto Electric Safety Days, the first of three events to educate children in Palmetto Electric’s service area about how to stay alive and thrive in the Lowcountry.
This is the 20th year the electric cooperative has held events to educate children about safety. The program originally warned children about the dangers of downed power lines and electricity in general, but it has expanded its scope over the years.
For three hours Tuesday morning, Bluffton Boys & Girls Club members learned how to stay safe with regards to electricity, on their bicycles, at the beach and around animals — wild and domestic.
Jim Edwards, an education specialist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, tells a story of when his “impulsive little redhaired daughter who loves animals” picked up a friend’s hamster. With a huge smile she brought it toward her open mouth.
“It thought ‘The end is near’ and bit right through her thumbnail,” Edwards said.
That animal had never bitten anyone before in its life.
Tuesday he asked several volunteers whether they had a younger brother or sister. Most did.
Next, he asked if those younger siblings had bitten them. All raised their hands.
“The moral is if it has a mouth, it can bite. Not can, will. That’s the important thing to remember about animals,” Edwards said.
PalmettoElectricCooperativealso held Safety Days events in Hampton on Wednesday and Ridgeland on Thursday.
Presenters use 3-D live props to make the event memorable. Palmetto Electric’s Marketing Technician Travis Malphrus hooks a fleshy hot dog to his model of a downed power line. The hot dog, once in contact with high voltage, explodes.
“Even though it has insulation around it, you don’t want to grab it. It will go right through it,” said Edwards. “Don’t get near downed power lines.”
Bike helmets can turn ad adangerous sport into amuch safer one, said Kirk O’Leary of the Bluffton Township Fire District, who taught the club members various bike safety tips.
Without a helmet, craniums are about as protected from impact as a watermelon. Brain injuries are often irreversible and can leave children dead, brain damaged or paralyzed.
To illustrate, O’Leary had vol- unteers drop their melons, which exploded.
Malphrus and O’Leary — with their exploding objects — were difficult acts to follow, said Mike Wagner, operations manager for Shore Beach Services. So he brought props, including a small sting ray, a long sting ray barb and a baby hammerhead shark in a jar.
Shore Beach Services contracts with the town of Hilton Head to staff every beach with lifeguards.
Wagner invited young volunteers to act out one of the most common scenarios on the beach: a child who loses track of his family and finds himself lost.
“We do end up looking for a lot of kids on the beach every day,” he said. “They wander, and everything starts looking the same.”
Wagner told young beach goers to look for marker numbers, and if lost “go to the first lifeguard they see. Don’t wait,” he said.
Also, he said, swim near a lifeguard and never swim alone.
“If they’re with somebody if they do get in any kind of trouble, there’s somebody that can either help them or go get help,” he said.
“Learn to swim; don’t overestimate your swimming ability and stay where you can stand up.”
One child asked Wagner about riptides, which he said usually don’t occur on Hilton Head Island.
“The key thing is don’t try to fight it. If you’re getting pulled out, let it take you out and then swim in, or swim sideways until you’re out of it. If you try to fight a riptide, you’re not going to win.”
Missy Santorum, Palmetto Electric’s public relations representative, said she was impressed by the children on Tuesday.
“Their questions were unbelievable. It’s a nice feeling when you feel the kids are taking away the safety lesson,” she said.
Cooperative reps gave away two free bicycles, water bottles, and safety coloring books and bought the students a pizza lunch to add to the safety lessons’ staying power.
The props don’t hurt either: Edwards brought a giant alligator skull, an enormous corn snake and a baby alligator to be oohed and ahhed over.
And if the lessons stick, then maybe the kids won’t get hurt.
Edwards said the National Rifle Associations “Eddie the Eagle’s” rules for what children should do if they see a gun apply to wild animals, too:
“One: Stop. Two: Don’t touch it. Three: Leave the area. Four: Get an adult.”
Everyone should think before they act, and know the steps to stay safe. “Rules are your friends,” Edwards said. “Rules are there to help you.”
Contact Sara Wright at 815-0817 or sara.wright@blufftontoday.com
“Rules are your friends. Rules are there to help you.” Jim Edwards S.C. Department of Natural Resources
Making ends meet becomes harder for Boys & Girls Club as parents struggle to do the same themselves.
Each afternoon after school, teens like Aaron Jenkins and Davon Polite trade one school for another, one set of teachers for another. The Bluffton Boys & Girls Club isn’t much of a leap in terms of focus from the high school, and it isn’t physically far either.
But whereas the latter is paid for with tax dollars, the former relies more directly on you. “We are surviving on a wing and a prayer,” said Molly O. Smith, the club’s director. The club gets most of its operating funds from private donations.
The state cut off all funding not long ago. The federal government gives only a little. Smith estimates she needs $200,000 by year’s end or things could go belly up in a hurry. “With the downturn of the economy more families need help, but … when the statement is made that we have to cut back or possibly close the doors, those are fighting words for me,” she said. “Yes, we are suffering in this economy.
If the doors are closed, I’m putting 748 kids literally on the streets, kids from 6 to 18 years old. That’s a scary thought, don’t you think? So we are trying everything we possibly can.” Forty-six volunteers take some of the burden off the club’s paid staff, but cuts have been made nonetheless, including all assistant unit directors. The real problem, Smith says, is there’s more of a need for the club than ever because of the economic wreck we’re all in.
She’s even had kids threaten to commit suicide over financial problems at home. “It’s impacting the families,” she said. “I’ve got homeless families in here. They’re trying to figure out how to make ends meet. That stress level is trickling down from the parents to the kids.”
She has a request: “What Joe Public can do for me, we have got to figure out how to make ends meet. We need financial help like everyone else does. If you ask me to cut back on my staff, I can’t keep all the kids. We’re not a babysitting service. We have programs, we are molding our future. We can’t do that with a 50 to 1 ratio of staff to kids. You’re not going to have a positive impact.
“Every little bit helps. If somebody wants to send me $10, I’d accept that as happily as I would $1,000. Don’t think, ‘Oh, all I can send is $10.’ I’d be like ‘Thank you Jesus.’ I’ve never seen it like this and I’ve been with this organization for 10 years.”
So what do the kids think of all this? What would happen to them if the club closed its doors? “I would probably be at home sleeping or watching TV,” said Jenkins, 14. “I’d probably be into a whole lot of things, which is what I used to do” before joining the Boys & Girls Club, said Polite, 17.
“I’d be on the streets, playing basketball maybe.” Jenkins and Polite both participate after school in the club’s Passport to Manhood program, listening to volunteers like business consultant Charles King tell them stories about life in adulthood. Tuesday afternoon, the teens listened as King, banker Joel Delph and others told them stories of values – including commitments, societal norms and per- sonal honor. “Take those values home with you now,” King said as the boys filed out.
Aaron Bush directs the manhood pro- gram. And he can’t imagine life as a teen today without it. “When I grew grew up there wasn’t a lot to do if we didn’t play basketball,” he said. “I think a lot of people see the Boys & Girls Club as a babysitter babysitter service. It is much more than that. It’s an opportunity for education, recreation and …achance for the kids to just chill.
“We do have structured times we take them through, but they can relax,” he said. “It’s a safe environment, no drugs, no violence, and they’re always walking around smiling.” Jenkins, coincidentally, walked back in the door as he said that: “I’ve always got a smile on my face.” Smith, meanwhile, continues to solicit funds any way she can.
Letters have been mailed, concerts have been scheduled, and candy bars are being sold – you can buy Boys & Girls Club candy bars at the local branches of Wachovia Bank, Coastal State Bank, First Federal Bank and All-Pro Lube and Tire.
Although the most the club can make through the sales is $6,000, Smith is happy with what she can get. “I can’t think of a better investment than that of our future,” she said.
Gospel concert coming up
The Bluf uffton Boys & Girls Club will host a concert of all-male gospel groups at 5 p.m. June 6. The event is free but donations are encouraged, said organizer Jim Gadson.
Performing groups include the Campbell Chapel AME, Lady’s Island Baptist Ch Church, the St. James Baptist Church and the Trumpet Travelers.
“It’ll be just a lot of singing, a lot of gospel songs,” Gadson said. “We’ll do one set of two songs each, take a break, then do some more.” He said the purpose of the concert is two-fold: “It’s to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club and to get the community together, and the parents, to come see what’s going on.”
For more information, call 757- 2845.
Boys & Girls Club wins state awards
BLUFFTON TODAY
The Boys & Girls clubs in Bluffton and on Hilton Head received two of just five awards presented at the South Carolina Area Council’s annual meeting for the Boys & Girls Club of America last month.
The meeting, held in Columbia on Sept. 25, included representatives from all of the Boys &Girls clubs in the state.
The Bluffton club received recognition for its “Show Me the Money” education and career development program, which taught children the importance of everyday money management, checking accounts, savings and banking.
The award to the Hilton Head club was for its successful sports, fitness and recreation program called “Hooked on Golf,” which taught kids the fundamentals of golf, appropriate dress, golf course etiquette and sportsmanship.
The Boys & Girls Club of the Lowcountry was created in 1990 and consists of clubs on or in Bluffton, Hilton Head Island, Beaufort, Hampton, Allendale, Coosa and Lady’s Island, Jasper and Colleton.
The Bluffton Boys & Girls Club was established in 1998 and is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
2008 Show Me The Money Summer Internship
. No big deal. She kept grinning as she fished in a cooler of acid for the test tubes clinking around inside, transferring them to another cooler full of water to rinse them off.
Money Matters LEADERSHIP JOB READINESS
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