(Applause)
What is happening tonight is the SYEP end of internship celebration.
It's our culminating event to celebrate the young people
and the work that they've done over the past 6 to 8 weeks in our program.
The theme of the event tonight is authenticity.
So essentially, that is for folks who show up and be themselves
and show the city who they are.
- It's a good program
to get your footing into jobs
and, to see and try out new things.
And so it was it's good to get your feet
wet into things you maybe like wanting to do.
- Young minds challenges, to be more innovative, to be more equitable,
to find new ways to communicate and to connect with community.
That's why
it's so important to have interns, not only in the city, but all around us.
- That's why we do these programs.
We want to nurture and feed that spirit inside you.
And if you didn't feel that, then we failed.
- You know, those are my interns.
So it wasn't just about shadowing.
It was about passing the torch of my knowledge of case management
and long term care to the up and coming generation in the workforce.
- The young people are our untapped resource that needs to be tapped in.
And so being able to have this program and invest in programs like SYEP
and other programs, that's crucial to being able
to revitalizing the workforce that's currently here in the City of
Seattle and may be a beacon of hope for many of the young people that may not
see themselves reflected in the workforce that we currently see today.
(Applause)