Mentoring is an integral part of academic and career success, and at Riis Academy we make every effort to provide our participants with meaningful mentoring opportunities to help them achieve their goals.
This year, a cohort of 12 students from our Riis Academy-InfoTech Learn and Earn program are participating in NYC STEP —a Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) group mentoring program that pairs groups of employee mentors with groups of public high school students from the city’s Learn and Earn program. NYC STEP is designed to provide college and career readiness during the calendar year bridging students’ junior and senior year, leading to education achievements and successful career/college options and life pathways.
Our students meet monthly with a group of 20 professionals from Company, a curated community of New York City’s top startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises. They participate in 2-hour-long virtual career-readiness workshops that cover a range of topics from resume-building and cover letters to networking and job hunting. The workshops are designed to be cumulative for mentees to build upon the skills they have learned and to form deeper relationships with working professionals in their fields of interest over the course of the program.
The program will run until the end of May and will culminate in a summer day of service in which the group will work together to give back to the community and further strengthen the bonds they have developed. The ultimate goal is that the mentoring relationships that students develop through the program are sustained in the long term.
Our students are enjoying the individualized support and are thrilled to have access to professional mentors in their fields of interest. “It makes me feel important… I am so glad to be part of it. The mentors are so open and nice to us. They talk to us like they expect us to be successful, and it is helping me feel more confident in myself,” said Riis-Academy participant Sunil Sharma.
After such a challenging year, we are grateful that our students can have this experience and grateful to DYCD and the mentors for their service.
