For Students
We Have A Lot To Offer
The 4 key goals at You Are Needed inspire our mission and our programs for students. It all begins at our in-person forums, and from there students can expand to informational interview with professionals, internships, and mentorships. Check out what we are doing to connect students to a wide variety of industry professionals!
Face-to-Face Forums
Selecting a domain to study and targeting a future career path is essential
To ensure that students will stay in school and will not give up. This is the key goal of You Are Needed. We begin by organizing one-hour, face-to-face and Zoom forum sessions between students and career professionals. Targeted locations are in high schools. Our forums are geared towards high school students in their sophomore and junior years, and the ideal group size for forums is 20-60 students. After a very brief welcome, invited speakers present the job that they do, what it consists of, how they got to that job, what they studied at school, what they like about their job, what they like less about their job. Forum speakers are announced ahead of time, and have included such diverse professionals as a university professor talking about his research studies, a lawyer from the sports industry, a dentist, a restaurant manager, a design director, and a PhD student in bio-engineering. College students are also invited to speak at You Are Needed forums to share about their on-going education journey.
A core part of the forum is to…
Deliver the between-the-lines message that what counts is that the student considers a field for which he or she has passion. A student’s future job may not exist yet, or the student may not know exactly what his job will consist of, but it sparks their interest and can inspire them to grow into the career. Environmental science is a good example, with many students wanting to study the subject, but are unsure exactly what jobs may be available in the field. One of the most important dimensions of You Are Needed helps students realize what careers are available to match their passions, even encouraging students to create their own jobs in their field of interest.
Interested students may also be able to participate in a mentorship program in their area of interest facilitated by You Are Needed.
Typical Agenda:
Welcome
You are needed project introduction
Discussion session between an interviewer and the adults presenting their profession
Q&A between the audience (students and parents) and presenters
Audience sharing on current learnings and wishes
Mentorship discussion
Closing and netwroking
Informational Interview With Professionals
If you are a teacher, tutor, or mentor with a student who is interested in speaking directly with a professional in the field of your choice, we are pleased to offer in-depth informational interview sessions between your students and engaged professionals.
These sessions allow individual students to ask targeted questions, explore opportunities, and learn the valuable skill of networking within a classroom framework, presenting an opportunity for any student to address a professional directly, while his or her peers are able to participate in an observer role.
Contact us with a little detail about your student and their goals, and we will organize an exchange session between that student and a professional in that career field during your class time.