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Jobs for America's Graduates is a nationwide nonprofit that works to help students be successful after high school.
The Kentucky branch is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
It currently serves about 4000 students statewide and has 69 programs and 40 different counties, with the goal of expanding to every high school in Kentucky.
Jack Kentucky is a lot of things.
First and foremost, we're a 523 nonprofit organization with the goal of serving Kentucky's most in need youth in order for them to graduate and to be successful after graduation, which includes straight going straight into the workforce, going to trade school, college, or even the military.
We are a an elective class in a high school or middle school.
In this class you are taught competencies.
You practice these competencies that are related to leadership, career development and job attainment.
And through those competencies, students become very skilled in being able to have clear communication, how to interview for jobs, how to follow up and the process, how to work in teams, and to be able to solve problems within that team and with outside that team.
We are consistently looking for a way to fill our pipeline and really look for those students who are coming out of school that are ready, work ready and really excited about getting into the workforce.
So many of the JAG students come to us and they are already leveled up there to a point that they understand what it means to be work ready to be prepared for the workforce.
The biggest thing is these students really want to succeed.
They've just been sometimes dealt a bad hand, or maybe they're in a situation with their family or other situations where they just can't get past where they're at.
So we try to help them through that, through graduation.
And then even one year after graduation, when we do follow up in making sure that they're still headed on the right path.
I was always an overachiever in academics.
I've always loved to keep the straight A's, but I struggled a little bit in certain areas.
I've never felt comfortable with any teachers until I joined the JAG program.
So once I joined, I felt very confident and academics and everything I've done since then has improved majorly.
My academics were not very good.
I would say they were a lot of Season D's, but then when I joined JAG, I was it gave me a sense of purpose.
It gave me a real confidence to be like, Hey, there's other things to do besides school and just work and getting to have a solid foundation of what you want to do in the community, helping your community.
And it's given me a chance to bring down my grades.
Now I'm a straight-A student.
JAG has helped me to become confident, so me to become one with myself and the kind of goals I want to commit I'm committed to and I'm striving for.
I think it's really important for other business businesses to look at this and other industries to look at JAG as a workforce pipeline.
It's their future.
Open up your doors, be able to let the youth of Kentucky be able to see what it is you do and how important it is.
Open up those doors for them.
And that was those doors that you're opening will end up being your future workforce.
So it's an investment.
It's not a donation.
It's not just doing this or that.
It's an investment in your future and your company's future.
JAG Kentucky has partnerships with ten different organizations, including Toyota, AT&T and the Kentucky Chamber.