Success by Choice Youth Employment & Entrepreneurship Expo a success!

ST. PETERSBURG  – “You can do this!” was the simple message that resonated with Daisha Gardner, an 18 year old who will be the first in her family to attend college. She was one of the nearly 80 young adults who attended the 2017 Success by Choice Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Expo by the 2020 Plan Taskforce, and she was not alone in feeling inspired after the day-long event.

Tailor-made for young adults ages 16-24, and supported by 40 workshop facilitators, vendors, employers and volunteers, the Expo provided soft skills training to include marketing your own brand, social media do’s and don’ts with vital training in job etiquette and simple professional courtesy.

Also partnering with the city’s Cohort of Champions My Brothers and Sisters Keeper Program, entrepreneurship workshops presented exciting information on “being your own boss” and a very popular session on “cell phone and tablet repair,” a class also taught in the PITCH Program at St. Petersburg College (SPC) Midtown Keene Center.

Each workshop was designed to be interactive, informational and relevant. From a motivating welcome from the SPC Allstate Center’s Associate Provost Dr. Tashika Griffith, words of encouragement could be heard with intent to assure the participants that the Expo was a critical investment in themselves.

To support their commitment, each participant could ask questions from several career experts, practicing new skills to get them the job they want through effective communication as well as understanding how to dress for the job they want; providing a real workday experience in a cultivating environment.

The Expo met and exceeded that goal, in support of the Working 1,000 Campaign for Youth Jobs by the 2020 Plan team.

“Being able to brand who you are is knowing who you are,” said Deborah Figgs-Sanders, who orchestrated the occasion, “and it is 2020’s mission to impact lives economically.” Figgs-Sanders served the dual role for the day of both co-chair of the 2020 Plan Taskforce and event manager, under her firm, Personal Agenda, LLC.

The 2020 team will follow up with the employers present, to follow the success of those fortunate to move their personal needle of success forward. Other participation requirements included pre-registration, a resident in south St. Petersburg and resides in a low to moderate income household.

For more information, please contact Cory Adler, Executive Director, 2020 Plan Taskforce, coryadler.2020@gmail.com (727) 742-1757.

ABOUT 2020: The 2020 Plan Taskforce team is what is known as a “backbone organization” —a group dedicated to providing the centralized infracture, staff and structured process needed to achieve a shared vision, using shared measurement, across diverse organizations. 2020’s goal is to reduce poverty by 30 percent in south St. Petersburg by the year 2020.