Why Internship Programs Help a Community Grow
Caps have been tossed, successes toasted. For the many local graduates who have recently received their degrees, a big question looms. Not just about where they will work, but where they will live.
It’s more important than ever for cities to actively promote livability. The competition for talent is growing, and for communities to thrive, they must attract enough young people to employ the workforce across industries for decades to come. The Chamber’s latest Quarterly Report includes data on talent attraction from Livability.com.
In Winston-Salem, opportunity knocks each summer as major employers welcome hundreds of interns to the area, while many of our academic institutions place local students into community internship positions. Whether these students already go to school here, or are just working here during the summer, their time in the workplace and their break from schoolwork allows them to truly experience the lifestyle of Winston-Salem. Let’s make it a good impression.
The Winston Salem Chamber aims to do so through the annual Intern Experience program. Each summer, we welcome interns to the community and provide an organized peer group to help them get the most out of their brief experience here. A kick-off event offers career development topics, guest speakers, and more. For the remainder of the summer, the group is encouraged to participate is a broad variety of local activities. This includes socials, leadership luncheons, ballgame outings and more. Many of these events are in conjunction with the Winston Under 40 program to encourage interaction with young professionals already living here.
The Intern Experience program gives students support and information to help them succeed, provides employers with an additional resource to improve their individual internship programs, and ultimately helps to cultivate talent that benefits the entire community’s growth.
If your organization is expecting interns this summer, please enroll them in the Intern Experience. Our kickoff event happens June 11th.
To learn more about local internship programs, watch this short video featuring local interns and their employers here in Winston-Salem:
