PBD Continues Commitment to Developing Chicago Youth

The Development School for Youth (DSY) is an outside-of-school leadership and business training program here in Chicago. In partnership with businesses and caring corporate professionals, DSY offers supplemental educational, social and internship experiences in a variety of workplace settings. This training prepares inner-city youth to enter the professional workforce, pursue educational opportunities and face challenges in new ways. This year, Mariani Harris (pictured above) joined Partners by Design for her internship.

As Marini’s internship comes to a close, the DSY Internship Reception was held on Tuesday, August 11th. PBD staff attended the event as support Marini. The event was to celebrate the interns accomplishments as well as recognize all the companies that helped support the program with providing internship opportunities as well as financial support. It was the largest class of internships the program has had to date so it was a great success and something that definitely should be celebrated.

Marini was selected by the program to speak at the event about her experiences at her internship and did a fantastic job. She talked about how she was nervous that the employees would judge her or not include her, but that she experienced the complete opposite- with everyone treating her like an employee, inviting her to meetings and lunches, and truly feeling like part of the PBD family. She discussed some of the major discussions that I had with her as a supervisor, about time management and communication, as well as overall engagement in her job. She said she knew these discussions were difficult but was very happy to have had them so she could only become better. She also mentioned how she has made a lot of connections and is hoping that some of them provide more opportunities with her pursuit of going to college and/or future job opportunities. Two other students and one supervisor spoke about their experiences as well. Afterwards each intern provided a plaque of appreciation to their supervisors thanking them for their support during their internship.

Find out more about the DSY Internship program here.