Light My Way ~ Career Day

http://bronx.news12.com/clip/14833728/students-get-advice-for-professionals-during-career-day 

Each year, approximately 40 Career Volunteers visit a public elementary school, P.S. 18, in the South Bronx, to tell their career story to children who have expressed an interest in hearing about their jobs.

We feature 25 careers each year such as Air Traffic Controller, Bus driver, Microbiologist, Dancer, Fine Arts Painter, Paleontologist, Soccer Player and Robotics, careers we will be featuring this year. Our program gives students access to professionals whom they might not otherwise meet. By the time a student graduates from elementary school, each will have had seven interviews and will have met 14 professional role models. 

How do the students choose which careers to learn about? Before each Career Day, each student (all 600) is interviewed for 30 minutes by an educator or clinical social worker. There are 5 people on our interview team. We give the students various exercises to help them tap into their passions, talents and interests - often ones they didn’t even know they had.

The program reveals whole new worlds of career choices to the students, and lets them see which ones align with their own interests and passions. 

____________________________________________


The mission of Light My Way ~ Career Day is to provide young students with this opportunity to choose careers that align with their passions, to fuel the momentum they’ll need to reach their career and life goals as adults, to help them to “dream big” and to give them a vision of who they can become.

Visit our website to find out more about us. http://lightmyway-careerday.org

Light My Way ~ Career Day Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Donation Levels

$25 Materials for Career Day Event
On Career Day, we give out art materials and give aways for students to remind them of the Career Volunteers they met. We give them water color sets and paper, first aid kits, plastic stethoscopes, material for the fashion design, diaries for writing classes, flowers, and fossils.

$35 Partial Funding for 1 Student
Partial Funding for 1 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$70 Partial Funding for 1 Student
Partial Funding for 1 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$140 Career Day for 1 student
Funding for 1 student's Career Day experience; the Career Day interview and the Career Day Event.

$280 Career Day for 2 students
Funding for 2 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$300 Career Day Breakfast
At 8:00 am, 40 Career Volunteers attend a breakfast before making 2 forty minute presentations about their careers.

$500 Career Day Student Tags
Each of the 629 students will receive a tag to wear around their neck to remind them of the Career Presenters they chose to meet when at their interview. It also tells the child the location of the presentations. This pays for the creation, distribution and time spent putting the chords on the tags.

$560 Career Day for 4 students
Funding for 4 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$700 Career Day for 5 Students
Funding for 5 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$1,400 Career Day for 10 Students
Funding for 10 student's Career Day experience; Career Day interview and Career Day Event.

$2,800 Career Day for 10 Students
Funding for 20 student's Career Day Experience; The Career Day interview and the Career Day Event.

$4,200 Career Day for 30 Students
Funding for 30 student's Career Day Experience; the Career Day Interview and the Career Day Event.

$5,600 Career Day for 40 Students
Funding for 40 student's Career Day Experience; the Career Day Interview and the Career Day Event.


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Meet the Interviewers:

Linda Marks Katz is a Clinical Social Worker and Founding Director of the Light My Way ~ Career Day program. 



_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Debbie Duffy has been a member of the LMW~CD team for 11 years and was a founding mother of the program.  She conducts Post ~ Career Day interviews to assess the student’s experience on Career Day and at their interviews. Debbie is an Educator / Tutor and helped carry out legal assessments of case records at a shelter for homeless individuals and families transitioning to public housing.

___________________________________________________________________________

Pascale Josephson is an Educator, an Occupational Therapist, and Thai Massage practitioner. Pascale has been an interviewer for the past 9 years and a leader of our team for the past 3 years.




_________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Raisa Frias has been an interviewer on the team for the past 6 years. When she is not interviewing with the students, she is a therapist / case manager at a homeless shelter.



_________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Mary Ann Howkins is a Social Worker and psychotherapist in private practice. She has been an interviewer for the past 3 years and has volunteered at the Career Day Event for the past 5 years.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sally Morales was an Educator and a resource room teacher for the NYC Dept. of Education for 40 years. Sally is seated in the lower right hand corner and is wearing the bright red sweater. She has been doing interviews for Light My Way ~ Career Day for the past 3 years.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Siobhan Joan Dolan is a Psychiatric Nurse by training and is a psychotherapist in private practice. She was the Director of several therapeutic programs helping first responders after 9/11. She has been on the team for 3 years.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hafida Nasri is a multilingual translator. She knows many languages including, French, Italian, Spanish and all dialects of Arabic. We have students who are refugees from Yemen who need her assistance with translation of the interview. Hafida has been a member of the interview team for the past 4 years.


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Evaluation

This year, we conducted an evaluation to assess the effectiveness of our program. The evaluation was done by a group that evaluates public school programs and was recommended to us by the Principal of the school we serve at P.S. 18 Bx.  To request a copy of the evaluation, please email Linda Marks Katz at [email redacted]

Thank you for your consideration!

Linda Marks Katz