Taemar
This month’s installment of our Community Spotlight series features one of the fellows from the Project Production Team, Taemar. Taemar first participated in our Spring 2022 Apprenticeship program, hosted through the Work Based Learning Coalition (WBLC) program. The group's journey at Beam led them to completing the internship portion of the program with SolarOne, Hypothekids and then with Beam Center during the summer. Speaking about her experience with our Apprenticeship program, Taemar says she had a lot of fun and it helped change her perspective of others. She says, “Some people are very mean but Beam Center gives you a good perspective of how to treat people.”
During her internship with Beam Center, Taemar worked with a group of five other young people, where they created their own games to teach to 5th graders. Later they went to Beam Camp City on Governors Island and taught campers how to build their own games. Taemar says that was her first experience working with kids, and she had fun while teaching. She says, “It was a very good [experience]. At the end of the summer we put the projects together and then we taught kids how to do them on Governors Island. It was my first time teaching kids, it was very fun. I love to do that.”
Taemar is now collaborating with our fellows from our Project Production Enterprise to help build our big project, “Baobab: The Tree of Life” designed by artist Tijay Mohammed. Our Project Production enterprise collaborates with artists, Beam staff, youth staff, and youth participants to build large projects across Beam’s programming sites. During this collaboration, fellows learn different skill sets which differ based on the type of project they are building. This year, youth are learning different soft skills like communication, planning, and strategizing; as well as hard skills like woodworking, metalworking, welding, sanding, and more.
Taemar says out of all the different skills she learned, welding is her favorite because it helped her build her mosaic stool. The fellows worked on independent projects where they created their own mosaic stools as an introduction to “Baobab: The Tree of Life.” When asked about her experience with the fellows, Taemar says, “they show many times that they care, like every day before work we do some exercise and to express how we feel and what we are going through and I really like it.”
When asked what she thinks is special about Beam Center, Taemar says, “They see everybody as the same and respect others.” She continues adding, “They don’t give up. Like, if you are working on a project and they see mistakes they [tell you to try again] and say it’s gonna be better or make things better.”
Beam Center is grateful that Taemar joined the Apprenticeship program and continues to participate in our programming. Thank you Taemar for being part of the Beam Community!
