This summer Bexar County hired 16 high school interns through the San Antonio Works Program. This is the first year of Bexar County’s involvement with SA Works and it has gone very well; not only for the Interns, but the supervisors as well.
SA Works allows young students the chance to have summer internships with many different employers, including HEB, HoltCat, CPS Energy, Firstmark Credit Union, Toyota and East Central Independent School District. These experiential learning opportunities help students develop soft skills needed to thrive in the workplace, while gaining experience that can help determine their career paths.
Each intern earned $13 per hour, the County’s current livable wage. With this being many of the interns’ first job, the students were surprised by how much they were trusted throughout the internship. On the other hand, supervisors were surprised with how much work they got done with them around.
“When people ask me about what I do at the County I often find it hard to explain because I do so much,” said Daniel Arriaga, who worked in the County Manager’s Office.
Each intern was assigned to different departments, but the work they did was not specific to that one department. For example, the Public Information Office intern, Fritjof Johnson, was overwhelmed with all the emergency management training he received.
“I would have never known I wanted to be an EMT/firefighter if it wasn’t for that training,” Johnson said. “Just never ask me to do FEMA training again.”
Farewell
Until We Meet Again...
Until
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