In today’s episode of the Elevate Your Career podcast, Nicole is joined by Talia Klutch, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Persevere, a not-for-profit focused on resources and opportunities for people looking to attain technology careers post-involvement with the justice system.
A mom of three who spent more than three years in prison is now spending her summer completing an internship at an Ivy League school.
For many troubled teens, a sentence to juvie feels like a sentence to fail. Statistically speaking — it is. 80-percent of juvenile offenders end up back behind bars within three years, less than 2-percent ever enroll in higher education. Prison is their most likely career path. Persevere doesn’t believe children should be chained to their past. The social justice organization has created a coding course, so incarcerated youth can engineer a future outside correctional facilities. It’s designed to turn delinquents into developers.
We are excited to announce that SHRM has featured our impactful work with opportunity youth! These young individuals, aged 16 to 24, are neither working nor in school and represent an untapped talent pool with immense potential. Persevere’s programs empower them with the skills needed to break cycles of poverty and incarceration. SHRM highlights the benefits of hiring opportunity youth for addressing workforce talent shortages and fulfilling social responsibility goals. We are proud of this recognition and remain committed to creating lasting change for these young people and the broader community.
This often untapped talent pool may offer HR the opportunity to fill open positions with eager and driven young talent.
Persevere, a Tennessee-based business, has their coding program in four prisons, in the state of Arizona. The organization works with incarcerated people in four Arizona facilities, teaching computer coding to help reduce recidivism rates, according to Axios Phoenix.
Persevere holds community event to promote wellness and workforce readiness
On Friday, WCI “formally celebrated” the Persevere Program coming to its facility. Persevere is a year-long course focusing on training inmates to become full-stack web developers. It includes life skills classes and the opportunity to get help with transitional housing, according to officials. Persevere launched our Florida classes at 2 facilities at the end of 2023. In March 2024 we had an official ribbon cutting to launch the program. – Source: WCTV News Florida
Learning how to code can be incredibly challenging. New developers often discover that even once they’re able to build something, they struggle to articulate how it works. The ability to communicate technical concepts is essential, especially when seeking job opportunities in the development world.
America is currently home to more than 4 million youth aged 16-24 (which has increased after the pandemic) who aren’t in school or working. They are known as Opportunity Youth because of their potential value to our communities and economies. Young Black and Latino people are up to three-to-six times more likely to be disconnected than whites. Youth of color are far more likely to suffer adverse outcomes like poverty and incarceration, which increases for those that have experienced foster care, human trafficking, juvenile justice involvement, and parental incarceration.
© 2019-2024 PERSEVERE. All Rights Reserved.
© 2019-2023 PERSEVERE. All Rights Reserved.
