While some students in San Antonio were dropped off at their summer jobs by their parents, the way Rachael Oreoluwa arrived at her internship at the Witte Museum might have turned heads. She caught a ride in an Edgewood Independent School District police vehicle.
Oreoluwa was among 220 young San Antonians who participated in a summer internship program put on by SA Worx, which pairs high school students with local companies. Where most don’t even start looking into internships or work-based learning until late in their college careers, SA Worx participants jumped right into the workforce.
SA Worx is just one in a vast patchwork of initiatives in San Antonio aimed at upskilling the next generation workforce and building a pipeline to match the needs of the labor market.
While the program has been around for eight years now, this year was the first that its administrator, Greater: SATX Regional Economic Partnership, partnered with the Edgewood and San Antonio Independent School Districts to guarantee transportation for students to ensure equitable access to internship opportunities.
That is key, according to Romanita Matta-Barrera, chief workforce officer at Greater: SATX, who said that transportation has arisen as an obstacle for students in recent years.
Building a talent pipeline
The collaboration allowed 15-year-old Oreoluwa to pursue an internship at the Witte Museum. She learned about the program through Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention nonprofit.
“I don’t think I would have been able to have this experience if I didn’t have Communities in Schools or the help from transportation,” said the Memorial High School senior. “But it just gives me a sense of responsibility, and it gave me a step forward into other routes I’d like to take.”
Oreoluwa was taken to and from her internship every day by a member of the Edgewood ISD Police Department.
“At first, I was scared,” she told the San Antonio Report. “When I would get dropped off, people would ask me if I was okay.”
But she became more comfortable with the situation as the summer went on.
Edgewood ISD Police Chief Jesse Quiroga said the help was a logical extension of the work the department already does.
“When we found out about this child needing the intern transport … it didn’t faze us,” he told The Report. “We didn’t skip a beat.”
San Antonio ISD used a district school bus for one SA Worx student, and three other district interns, with another seven expressing interest in the transportation option early on.
Matta-Barrera said that the program is also essential in preparing the next generation workforce.
“We really see it as a balance of skills and competencies,” she said. “Especially as we’re moving more and more towards a knowledge based economy.”
The importance of communication
Instead of just learning a trade, the program focuses on building transferable skills for students, like critical thinking and strong communication.
“If you build strong critical skills, strong communications, you can transition from one field or industry and to another,” Matta-Barrera said.
Students learn through both on-the-job training and online professional development modules.
Oreoluwa, for example, aspires to pursue a degree in psychology after she graduates next year — but she interned in the visitor experience department at the Witte.
“I learned that there are going to be different people that you’re going to have to deal with [and] not everybody’s going to appreciate you,” she said. “But just keep doing what you do because there will be people that will appreciate you.”
She also learned how important communication can be, especially in difficult situations. On one occasion, she couldn’t make it to her shift.
“I was afraid of telling them that I wouldn’t be able to make it. But when I told them, their response surprised me, because they told me they were gonna help me,” she said.
Oreoluwa moved to San Antonio from Nigeria on Christmas Day in 2019, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools and disrupted education.
Real-world experience
Other students are interning at major companies they hope to return to eventually.
Cody Zhu, a 16-year-old who attends Keystone, a private school, completed a software engineering internship at USAA, where he was able to create a program using AWS, the Amazon Cloud service, to help the company understand how customers were feeling at any given time.
“What we did is we made a program using the services that essentially analyzes the sentiment of … Tweets and Facebook posts,” he said. “If there’s a tweet that’s like, ‘USAA is my favorite insurance company they have great rates and great service,’ this program, will mark that tweet as positive.”
The program also flags negative tweets, allowing the company to analyze customer satisfaction trends.
Zhu and Oreoluwa both emphasized the importance of being paid for the internship work and the opportunity to gain real-world experience through the SA Worx program.
“As a high schooler having your own paycheck coming in from an actual desk job really teaches you how to manage your own money,” Zhu said.
Zhu plans to finish high school, apply for college and pursue a career in STEM or computer science.
“Employers really don’t see this type of experience, especially in high school,” he said. “So, you know, it really gives me a great opportunity for special employment opportunities later on in my life.”
According to the most recent census data, just over 27% of San Antonio adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, limiting the local hiring pools for companies seeking qualified candidates.
Matta-Barrera hopes that the SA Worx program, and others like it, will show students that they have a place in the San Antonio workforce once they begin their careers.
For Zhu, San Antonio will be on his list.
“San Antonio really has a special place in my heart, especially with all the benefits this program has provided me,” he said. “In terms of after college, I think I’m really going to go where the jobs are … and San Antonio, especially in the past few years has grown a lot economically and in terms of its population, so it’s a really great place for employment.”
