Opportunity Knocks at East High Career Fair

High school students participate in the 4th annual Youth  Opportunity Career Fair at East High School.

Opportunity came knocking for teenagers from all over the district on Wednesday at East High School.

The 4th annual Youth Opportunity Career Fair, sponsored jointly by DMPS and the United Way, drew 40 organizations offering everything from holiday volunteer posts as Salvation Army bell ringers to potential career track internships at Nationwide Insurance. In between those extremes were openings for a variety of summer jobs through applications coordinated by the Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families. Looking to get into showbiz? Flix Brewhouse was there, too. Also represented was an assortment of post-secondary educational options ranging from the Iowa School of Beauty to Iowa’s regent universities.

“We want as many students as possible to come through and get them thinking both short-term and long-term,” said Jill Padgett, East’s Site Coordinator for Communities in Schools. “There’s a lot here for them to see and consider.”

According to Padgett, almost 500 students registered for last year’s fair and more than a quarter of them found jobs as a result.

Though East is the host school this year, students attended from all of the district high schools. A busload arrived from Roosevelt right at the opening bell at 10:30 AM. Also waiting for the doors to open was a contingent from the East High Ambassadors, a student leadership class. Junior Rory Walling already has a summer job lined up as a pool lifeguard but the Ambassadors emphasize community service so he was on the lookout for options in that area.

“I signed up for this so I could explore some ways to volunteer that will fit in my schedule,” Walling said.

This is Nationwide’s first time at the event. Last year the company, a major employer in the Des Moines area, piloted a new internship program called College 2 Careers that was promising enough to warrant expansion. That’s why Nationwide’s booth was one of those marked 18+ to indicate that its interest was strictly in soon-to-graduate seniors.

Many of the tables lining the gym floor in the Tom Whitney Activities Complex featured bowls of candy as bait. But what they really sought to hook students on was more substantial. The water was teeming with schools of students “looking for something to do” in lots of the right places.

Photos from the Youth Opportunity Career Fair