Every year area students gain valuable work experience through Y.O.U.’s ProPath Internship Program. This summer 12 youth are interning at five different companies across the city obtaining valuable understanding of careers as diverse as Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, Business, Management, & Administration, Health and Science Technology, Arts, and Communication. On August 1, 2018, six youth from Y.O.U.’s ProPath and JumpStart’s intern program presented what they learned in just three weeks to representatives from Y.O.U. employees, Tri-C, and Family & Children First Council of Cuyahoga County at Cuyahoga Community College’s Westshore campus in Westlake.

The students, who aspire to careers from medicine to photojournalism, manipulated, explored, and showed the capabilities of cutting-edge technologies of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and their potential uses in the medical field. Each student demonstrated a different piece of technology, such as Virtual Reality headsets, Augmented Reality Glasses, video editing software, social media, and blog pages. The students’ excitement surrounding these projects was immediately contagious.

In addition to learning about advanced technologies, the interns created videos for the non-profit Vessel Works. They wrote the script, directed, and edited “HOW CAN I,” a series of six videos to help cancer patients navigate living life with cancer. Additionally, they monitored and updated Vessel Works’ website and Facebook page.

Students spoke individually with visitors and put them in the wearable technology to demonstrate its abilities and use. Visitors shrieked as they walked through haunted houses and swayed during dizzying roller coaster rides on the VR headset. They explored a human skeleton and the body’s different systems using AR glasses and conducted a virtual autopsy. Throughout the event, students and visitors discussed the potential of this technology and its place in the future of the medical field and their lives.

Setting tomorrow’s leaders up for success means providing opportunities that teach, inspire, and stretch the students to go beyond any prescribed boundaries. Throughout the year, we will spotlight the work Y.O.U., area business, and young people are doing to build a brighter, stronger, smarter tomorrow.