Let’s hear from our Summer Interns from Steppingstone Scholars…Tyiana and William!
“Follow the Cemented Road”
Last Friday, we had the privilege of hosting a tour of The Resource Exchange warehouse for a group of Steppingstone Scholars. The tour group consisted of a group of around 20-25 scholars and we spent the better half of two hours showing them the space. But before we get into the logistics of the tour, here is a little background on what Steppingstone Scholars is.
Steppingstone Scholars Inc. is a program, “dedicated to helping educationally underserved students in the Greater Philadelphia region achieve success.” To fulfill this mission statement, Steppingstone recruits bright young children from all over the city (at age 10) and those children are enrolled in the Steppingstone Scholars Inc. summer program the summer before entering 5th During this summer long program, the children selected spend day after day in a school where they go through lessons and classes just as they would during the school year. For example, you may start your day with Math, History, and English, which leads to have lunch, then finish the day with Spanish, Latin, Science, and an elective. Yes, this all may seem tedious and not at all a fun way to spend two summers (as you come back for a second summer the next year), but we can both say from experience (as Steppingstone alumni) that going to and graduating from Steppingstone was one of the best decisions that we ever made. While you might graduate from Steppingstone Scholars Inc. the summer before entering 6th grade, you never actually leave Steppingstone… and Steppingstone never leaves you. Steppingstone always finds ways of keeping in touch and checking up on you, may that be in the form of an email or popping by your high school for a meeting years after you graduate. They present job opportunities to you when you come of age.
This brings this blog to the tour we mentioned at the beginning of this post. After you reach a certain grade Steppingstones presents you with opportunities for internships. They provide you with many different options for an internship, so that you can find one set for an area/field that you might want to go into later in life, or a place where you could learn certain skills. Some of the internships allow you to work with United States Congressmen, Journalism programs, and different businesses, though we choose to intern at The Resource Exchange. Steppingstone likes to send out the students who would be able to do the internships the next year on a tour of each internship workplace environment so that the students will have a preview of what they could do. During the tour, in which we were tour guides; we showed the other Steppingstone Alumni around the building. We split the tour up into two groups and showed them the different sections of the Resource Exchange along the way they explained the benefits of working at the Resource Exchange and what it has taught us. We described the structure of our work schedules and what we expected to learn by interning at the Resource Exchange. 
At the end of the tour we sent all of the students into the store to explore on their own and encouraged them to make purchases. By the end of the day many students got on the bus with fabrics, stage props, and various arts materials for projects. The tour was a success and many students left interested in interning at The Resource Exchange!
