This year the Candy Factory had the pleasure of having students from Advantage Lancaster come in an intern with members! This will be the third year that the Candy Factory has partnered with the organization to provide internships for their students.
Advantage Lancaster is a local educational nonprofit organization that focuses on creating a “winning life plan” for their students. The organization has five fundamental principles: appreciation of the arts, community involvement, career exploration, educational opportunities, and wellness. With all these components combined students involved with the organization are more well rounded and are exposed to new experiences and opportunities.
Every summer, during the month of July, the organization hosts a summer program aimed to combat the summer slide. As described by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development “It appears that summer learning loss is cumulative and that, over time, these periods of differential learning rates between low-income and higher-income students contribute substantially to the achievement gap.”
The summer program is structured so that the students are actively learning and putting the skills and knowledge to use. The program runs four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Each of these days the students are in a literature, science and math course. The students also go on college campus tours and have weekly wellness trips to the YMCA.
Throughout the month of July, the interns visited the Candy Factory on Mondays and Wednesdays during the afternoon meeting with members and working on various projects. Through these internships, the students gained experience and have established connections in their community that can be used in the future.
Students like Sadeyah, a junior at McCaskey High School, had the chance to work alongside Sandra Jordan of Sandra Kilpatrick Jordan Consulting helping to do research on projects in the education field. Other students like Melissa, a Senior at McCaskey, partnered with Tanay Harris of Tenacity Consulting Co, aiding with transcribing documents. We had various other students that were partnered with other members like Simon, a Junior at McCaskey, who worked on software plugins for Thanks Pearl, a virtual assistant that helps you stay organized.
We are happy to have worked with Advantage Lancaster this summer and wish all our student interns the best of luck in the upcoming school year!
