Erica Bell may only be 16 years old, but in her part-time job as a junior staff member at the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi, she’s learning how to work with children.

“You’ve got to get to know that child,” said Bell, who’s working at the club’s Velma Young Unit. “You have to respect them…and make sure they feel like they’re at home.”

Bell is among dozens of teenagers employed through the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi’s Workforce Development Program. Last spring, the Meridian City Council pledged $172,000 to provide jobs and training for the teens, following up on a grant of $422,000 that the club received from the Mississippi Department of Human Resources to fund teachers and training programs for students.

In all, the funding from both sources allowed the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi to hire — and to provide training for — about 100 teenagers as “junior staff members,” earning $8 an hour during four-hour shifts and receiving career and financial education along the way.

HARD AT WORK

Assisting full-time staff members, the teens work with groups of younger students on academic tasks, recreational projects and other sorts of activities.

Now, deep into the summer, the teens are at work — learning and passing along the things they’ve absorbed to younger students at the club.

“When they see us come to work, they run up to us and hug us every day,” said Tyqurisha May, 16, a new junior staff member who was working at the West End Unit on a recent July morning.

May said she’s come to the club for years as a member herself, and remembers looking up to the adults working with children.

“It made me want to do the same thing,” she said.

The junior staff members, as they discussed their work, talked about plans that soared beyond their immediate jobs, with plans ranging from finances to medicine.

“I just like working with kids,” added Keara Johnson, 16, who’s also working at the West End Unit. “When I get older, I’m going to be a pediatrician.”

Andricus McClelland, 17, works with boys from 10 to 12 years old at the Northeast Unit, and he said he likes to involve all the children in play, no matter their level of skill.

“We just have fun,” he said. “We try to get everyone out and play.”

Ricky Hood, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi, said teens from all over the community — not just teens who’d already been members of the club — are working as junior staff members.

He said the students are all working at Boys & Girls Club centers right now, but soon they will begin working at schools and other organizations in the community.

Hood stressed the program is designed to help teens hone skills that will help them in college, workforce programs and also in the far-reaching careers they may pursue. But he also noted the immediate financial needs many teens, and their families, experience.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to give them skills, train them, but we’re also trying to put some money in their pocket,” Hood said.

For many of the students working, he added, the program plays a vital financial role.

“The vast majority are working to help out at home,” he said. “They’re trying to help out their parents.”

The program, Hood said, shines a light on the shortage of jobs for local teens.

“What this program has identified — we already knew it – is that there is a great need in this community for jobs for our young people,” he said. “They really, really want to work, but they want to be trained. They want to know how to work.”

Hood noted that every student working in the program is required to complete training that involves career preparation and financial literacy. The students are also required to have a bank account in order to work in the program.

As the teens work with younger students, Hood said, they help to impart what he called “life lessons” — lessons that touch on places where the younger students will find themselves in just a few years.

“The next step up for a lot of our (younger) kids is that they’re going to be teenagers,” he said. “So (the older students) are really modeling great behavior while they work.”

LOOKING AT THE FUTURE

Whitney Hood, teen director for the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi, described some of the career-oriented training that teens are receiving at the club this summer — training for both the teens who are working, and for other teens at the club, as well.

“We have touched about 350 teenagers this summer,” she said.

She noted the job-readiness training called “Career Lunch.”

“It teaches you about how to get ready for the workforce,” she said, with tasks such as “getting prepared for an interview, learning what to say and what not to say during an interview, filling out job applications…”

The training also, she said, helps teens to “figure out where I want to be in five years, and in 10 years.”

Citizens National Bank, she said, provides instruction for another training segment called “Money Matters.”

That segment includes various topics deeply entwined with financial literacy. She added that those two classes, “Career Lunch” and “Money Matters,” are required courses for the junior staff members at the club.

Jermaine Harris, director of operations for the Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi, described the way the Workforce Development Program helps students to look beyond their immediate jobs at the club.

“We’re giving them the opportunity to know what it is they need to do to get a job, but we’re setting them up for a career,” he said.

A SENSE OF COMFORT

If the program touches older teens, it also reaches younger children who now have young-adult mentors to help them with games and lessons and other activities at the Boys & Girls Club.

For two children working with junior staff members on a recent morning, the presence of teens in positions of responsibility provided a sense of comfort.

“The way they talk to us is very calm,” said 12-year-old Andreika Terry.

“And when we leave,” added Akaylah McCoy, who’s also 12 years old, “they make sure we have all the stuff that we brought.”