David Caldwell Jr. - On Youth Work Experience (clip)

Blanche Brown (BB): Is there anything else you’d like to–we can keep talking but I know you didn’t–I didn’t know if you had something to do or anywhere to be? I just wanted to check in with you. Where you’re at?

David Caldwell, Jr. (DC): I am good ‘til about three so if you need more…

BB: Oh, okay. Well I was just thinking about... So, what threats do you see? You just said, “The onslaught.” Could you talk about that onslaught?

DC: Sure. Education. Our kids in our schools. Go to the schools and look at the kids in there. Look at our graduation rate. Look at, they’re constantly talking about the gap, the education gap on what the kids are having. Look at how diverse we’re becoming with the different, you know, economic, ethnic backgrounds and things that are coming in. We’re gonna get lost. That’s what I really feel is gonna happen. We’re gonna get lost if we don’t watch it and make sure we look out for our kids. We have to quit…my opinion is that we have to quit training and educating our kids to leave here and go somewhere else to work. We have to give them an opportunity, not just to bring in those dollars for an education for four years, six years, or eight years, but we have to bring them in and educate them for jobs that are right here. One of the ways of doing that, and I’ve always pushed that, is [in] summertime every one of our high school kids should be working. Every one of them and it can be done. All they need to do is get together. You know, one of the ways is to go to the Chamber of Commerce and get the businesses and say, “Hey…” and the Town and local governments you know, “…will you hire one local person for each position for six weeks to come in and work.”

BB: Yeah.

DC: I think Chapel Hill does it now. I think they do about thirty kids in thirty positions. I think if they got together with Chapel Hill and Orange County and the private sector they can do many, many more. I asked for six weeks. It’s gonna give the kids independence. It’s gonna give them experience. They are gonna know what they want to do. You might have a guy working, laying brick for somebody. He might realize, “You know, this is not what I want. I need to wear a tie and sit behind a desk” or “I don’t want to be in the sun”. Or you know it might be someone who says, “I did want to go into the medical field but I think I’m gonna do economics or sociology or biology.” But those are the things we got to do is give them that opportunity to learn and want to stay. Plus, if you hire this kid his junior year or his sophomore year going into his junior year, and he works six weeks, and you do it again the following year, when he graduates that should be the first place he puts in for a job if he continues to do it. So, you’ve got a person who has experience in that position that’s already trained and ready to go.

BB: And that would be beneficial to the businesses, so yeah.

DC: Yes.

BB: Yeah. Makes sense.

DC: So, it’s just a recruiting deal but we’re not doing it and I’m afraid that everybody is looking at, when they say there’s no work around here…It’s not that there’s no work. There’s nobody giving them the opportunity and we got to back them up in a corner and have them give that opportunity. You know, explain to them this is beneficial to you to do it. If it’s not done, they’re gonna leave. Just as sure it is that the sun comes up, they’re gonna leave. Black, white, blue or brown, they’re not gonna stay because we have not given them any reason to stay. You know, we don’t have any industry. All we have is education here, so let’s educate them to stay here. It’s just that simple.

BB: Yeah.