Fall 2022 WLG Project
The fall 2022 cohort of Work, Learn, Grow has begun, and we wanted to give you a sneak peek of the project youth are working on. Work, Learn, Grow (WLG) is a Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD)-run program for youth in high school who are either a junior or senior and have participated in SYEP during the summer. WLG offers different opportunities for youth, including college readiness, career exploration, and job readiness. Youth will learn soft skills like communication, collaboration, resume building, and hard skills like woodworking, craft and sculpting, and how to use power tools. This fall’s project, Pocket Plants, was designed in-house as an introduction to shop skills and to help youth explore different skill sets as a segway to career exploration through building.
Pocket Plants was designed to meet any maker at any skill level and will provide all necessary foundations in multimedia material manipulation processes needed for the project product. The project has one main objective: design and construct an object or structure that keeps a 1”x4” plastic test tube upright. It can be freestanding or suspended, but the test tube must be stable and ultimately able to hold water. Once the “armature” is complete, the test tube will be filled with water and a pothos plant cutting will be placed into the water. The cutting will then self-propagate and thrive in the water indefinitely. Following completion of the program, participants can take their armatures home or install them in our shop space.
Designed by our Director of Industry + Externship and facilitated by our Youth Employment team, this project is intended to be exploratory and iterative; once an armature is completed, another one may be started and the design, strategy, and function of each may be revisited if participants would like to change any parts of their Pocket Plants.
The project-making portion of the WLG program will run through the end of 2022, then youth will move into the internship portion of the program. Check back in January to hear where youth get placed!
