Take young adults from economically disadvantaged communities … give them six months of marketable job skills training (at no cost to them), a stipend, college credit, and a six-month internship with a top tier company in their community … and for certain you’ll change lives, maybe even the world.
Thanks to Year Up, this scenario has been a reality for more than 20,000 U.S. young adults over the past 20 years.
“We try to develop cultures where you look at the human being, not where they come from,” says Gerald Chertavian, Founder and CEO of Year Up.
Chertavian addresses crowd of more than 130 staff
Staff members from Business Affairs and the IT Community had the privilege of hearing Chertavian speak on campus last month, where he outlined the work and impact of Year Up, its ongoing mission to close the “Opportunity Divide,” and how Stanford is an active part of that mission.
For over a year now, the Stanford IT Community has been engaged with Year Up, building a partnership to hire Year Up interns to fulfill business needs within distributed IT teams. In January 2019, the School of Medicine (SoM) and University IT (UIT) hired five Year up interns for roles within the Information Security Office (ISO), the UIT Service Desk, and SoM Tech bar.
This summer, nine more interns will join our community for internships with IT teams in Stanford Research Computing, SoM, UIT, and the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning (VPTL).
Following their internships, the interns could go on to higher education or start a full time job, earning an average of 53 percent more than what they did prior to their training.
The partnership with Year Up is part of the IT Community’s IDEAL IT program.
It all started with David
Chertavian kicked off his presentation with a photo and a moving story about a boy named David, whom Chertavian started mentoring over 30 years ago as part of his involvement with Big Brothers Big Sisters. At the time, 10-year old David was living in one of the highest crime districts in New York City, a neighborhood through which you couldn’t walk without hearing the crunch of crack vials breaking under your feet.
“What I saw during those Saturdays with David, was someone who had all the potential and all the motivation, but his zipcode, the color of his skin, the bank balance of his mom, and the school he went to were absolutely limiting his God-given potential.”
In his graduate school entrance essays where he cited his experiences with David, Chertavian wrote, “if you accept me into your school, we will fix this one day.” And from then on, he made it his mission to close the Opportunity Divide for the five million “Davids” in this country, which led him to found Year Up in 2000.
Get involved
Here at Stanford, we are honored to be partners with this inspiring and game-changing organization. We are also benefiting greatly from the talent and skill of our Year Up interns. If you would like to learn more about Year Up and/or are interested in hiring a Year Up intern, contact Jon Russell, Year Up program lead, at jdrussell@stanford.edu
As Chertavian said, “We will do a good job for you. We will learn with you and stay relevant with the business needs of Stanford. We love our young adults like you will love our young adults. And because of our partnership, ten years from now, Stanford will be a different place.”
