NEW ORLEANS – On Thursday, March 9, YouthForce NOLA held its inaugural Career Expo at Xavier University’s Convocation Center. Presented by Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans and Greater New Orleans, Inc., the YouthForce NOLA Career Expo had more than 2,000 high school students attend from 16 YouthForce NOLA partner schools. YouthForce NOLA is an education, business, and civic partnership designed to better connect New Orleans public school students to career pathways in high-wage, high-demand industries.
“At the core of YouthForce NOLA is the belief that our public school students have the potential to be top performers in our region's HW-HD industries,” said YouthForce NOLA President, Cate Swinburn. “This expo, thanks to the deep engagement of our industry partners, allows our students to explore and experience hands-on, dynamic interaction with a variety of career pathways here in the New Orleans region, which will inform their education and career choices.”
At the YouthForce NOLA Career Expo, high school sophomores were engaged and inspired to consider their futures through interactive demonstrations and direct conversations with industry professionals. The goal of the expo was to facilitate post-secondary success for high school students by providing interactive engagement with industry professionals and training providers in our region’s high-wage, high-demand industry clusters.
“Junior Achievement is committed to connecting young people to the high demand, high wage jobs that will be available to them in our region over the next 5 to 10 years,” said Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans President Larry Washington. “Through the Career Expo and collaboration with YFN, we are able to expose Greater New Orleans students to these careers and help them start on the journey of filling these jobs in the future.”
“GNO, Inc. is proud to partner with YouthForce NOLA and Junior Achievement to host today’s Career Expo,” said Michael Hecht, president and CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc. “Demand driven workforce development is the key to placing our region’s citizens in good jobs, and this Career Expo is a great opportunity to highlight these jobs coming online in our region.”
More than 50 companies, institutions of higher education and technical training providers from the digital media/IT, dealth sciences and skilled crafts industries were represented at the YouthForce NOLA Career Expo.
