ANSYS, Inc. has participated every year since 1999. Host Chris Wolf says, “I like having kids here to learn about engineering, and I take every chance I have to get them excited about a future in technology… It’s fun to host young people and to educate them about all the things engineers can do.”

What do you want to be when you grow up?“ How would you have answered that question when you were 6 years old? Or 13 years old? Or 26? Are you still looking for the answer? Most elementary students will reply with roles they have seen in their community: teacher, doctor, truck driver. Or, they will think of professions they have seen glamorized on television: athlete, detective, performer. The US Department of Labor classifies workers into 840 detailed occupations! (www.bls.gov/soc/) Our youth need exposure to possibilities in order to understand the importance of school subjects and how they relate to the world of work. By the time students are finishing middle school and selecting courses for high school and beyond, this exposure is critical to making informed decisions about the huge array of career opportunities that await. A recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that on average Americans change jobs over 11 times between ages 18 to 48. (www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf)

Career planning is a life-long endeavor and the first step is to research options. That’s where the Upper Valley Business and Education Partnership (UVBEP) has been playing a role for Lebanon students for over 15 years.

wo aspiring chefs had an opportunity to shadow Chef Eli at The Co-op Food Stores Culinary Learning Center. They helped prep the teaching kitchen for a demonstration, attended the demonstration, learned about various culinary programs, helped clean-up after class, and toured the store.

Each Spring, 8th graders go out into the community for Job Shadow Day (JSD). Workplace hosts plan hands-on activities, facility tours and demonstrations to show students what it takes to be successful in their career field. UVBEP provides supporting information, such as job shadowing guidelines, suggested activities, agendas, ice breakers and conversation starters as well as follow up reflection and evaluation forms.
Over the years, sixteen classes of Lebanon 8th graders totaling more than 2,450 students have shadowed at 240+ Upper Valley businesses. The process begins with students completing a Job Shadow survey, which helps them think about what kinds of activities they enjoy and are good at. In addition to asking students what careers they might be considering, the survey encourages students to reflect on:

• WHAT do you like to work with (e.g., tools, textiles, electronics, machines, information)
• WHO do you like to work with (e.g., children, adults, people in need, people who challenge you)
• HOW do you like to work (e.g., alone, in groups, leading people, following directions, sitting, moving)
• WHERE do you like to work (e.g., indoors, outdoors, in a quiet space, surrounded by activity).

Students also have the opportunity to share what skills and strengths they have to offer that will help them succeed in the workplace. Our young people are confident and understand themselves well as these sample responses show:

• I’m a decent manga/anime artist, designing clothing and characters, writing short stories. Hard worker when determined and concentrated, creative doodling, creative thinker.
• I’m very good in math and science, good commitment, understand tech
• I’m a hard worker, good with children, good at following directions, I can think outside the box

At Systems Plus Computers, students learned to identify components in a dismantled laptop, and learned about the requirements for various certifications in technician repair.

UVBEP staff spend the early winter months recruiting employers who can introduce students to a career that uses some of the interest areas they indicated. Communicating with school staff, matching students with available hosts, and working within transportation parameters, UVBEP taps into the generous Upper Valley community.

Finally in March, students receive placement information, and this year over 420 students from 11 middle schools ventured out on April 2, 2015. Shadowing students spend the better part of the day in the workplace, arriving around 8:30 am and staying through the early afternoon. Prior to JSD they receive information about the day, expected attire, and an “interview your workplace host” worksheet to complete and bring back to school. Employers are creative about the ways they welcome the visitors: a sandwich board at the entrance to Lake Sunapee Bank reads “Welcome Job Shadow Students;” Upper Valley Veterinary Services posted a welcome message on their Facebook page; and at Great Eastern Radio, students introduce themselves on air. Students tour workplaces, sit in on meetings, and experiment with tools of the trade—as safety allows. Upon return to school, they participate in a reflection activity, complete an evaluation and write thank-you notes to their hosts. Here’s what some students had to say:

What surprised me most was…
• how much (goes) into bookkeeping and finance
• how much work it takes to manage
• the artificial joints and big words
Most interesting to me was…
• getting to make bone cement
• the costume room
• learning to use math skills
• crime scene analysis

Here’s a Job Shadow Day story with a throwback twist: This year, two 8th grade students from Hartland Elementary School spent the day exploring careers in motorcycle service at Mason Racing in Lebanon. Their hosts, Alex and Dan, are Lebanon Junior High School alumni who also participated in UVBEP’s Job Shadow Day over a decade ago!

Hundreds of local workplaces are proud to be a part of this community-building program, and this is played out in the number of hosts who give up their time willingly year after year. Ken Davis at the Co-op Food Stores has hosted for 8 consecutive years, allowing students to experiment with website design (coopnews.coop/invasion-of-the-eighth-graders/). Ken says, “Want to regain your faith in humanity? Your hope for the future? Spend your day with a bright, creative young person on Job Shadow Day. I never let them shadow me. I shadow them. I turn them loose then watch in wonder. Thanks to our amazing pals at UVBEP for pulling it off.”

UVBEP is a nonprofit organization serving 20 schools in the greater Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont. The Partnership facilitates programs that link schools with local employers, including experiential learning and career planning projects for students and professional development activities for educators. To learn more visit www.uvbep.org or www.facebook.com/uvbep.

Spring may be on the horizon, but it’s been an awfully cold winter – and for neighbors in need in Lebanon and beyond, it’s a good thing our community is home to an office of Tri-County CAP.

Tri-County Community Action Programs, by its long name, serves residents of Grafton, Carroll, and Coös counties with resources that can help them with home energy costs and conservation, housing, transportation, and more. And if Tri-County CAP doesn’t have a program to help a person in need, they know who does.

“We offer a huge referral system for people in our New Hampshire Upper Valley,” said Upper Valley Community Contact Office Manager Angel Hudson. “We never turn somebody away without some sort of resource. We never leave somebody with an ‘I don’t know.’”

Hudson focuses on the offices fuel and electric assistance programs, which have been “crazy” this year as electric rates have climbed. The programs help low-income, “vulnerable households” pay for heating fuel or electric bills when they can’t do it on their own.

As of late January, Hudson had processed more than 500 fuel assistance applications, had about 50 more to work through, and was expecting to top last year’s 644 applications before the season ends in April. She had also received 430 applications for electric assistance.

In addition, she had handled 37 emergency contacts – cases where the fuel supply is dangerously low (or electric heat is about to be disconnected) and the resident can’t afford more.

Most of the funding for these programs comes from the Federal government, through the state’s Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Hudson also raises private funds to cover when government funding falls short. Her “FAP Gap” (Fuel-Assistance Program Gap) fund helps qualified clients if available fuel assistance alone can’t cover the minimum fuel delivery cost, an overdue bill prevents them from getting a fuel delivery, or they run out of fuel assistance funding.

“I’m not going to let somebody go cold if I can help in some way,” Hudson said.

Hudson is one of just two full-time employees in the Lebanon office. Her colleague, Dianne Munson, manages the office’s homeless outreach programs.

The primary goal, Hudson said, is to find shelter beds in New Hampshire for local people who need a place to go. With no shelter in the Lebanon area, clients are most often sent to Claremont, Concord, or Manchester, and sometimes north to Tri-County’s Tyler Blain House in Lancaster.

(Some readers may remember Tyler Blain, a 1996 Lebanon High School graduate who died tragically in 2006. Toward the end of his life he worked tirelessly for Tri-County CAP’s homeless outreach programs and helped launch an effort called 10 Bricks to provide emergency shelter for adults without children – which at the time was entirely lacking in the Upper Valley – in Lebanon.)

But the number of shelter beds in the state is limited, and “on any cold day, it is very difficult to find a shelter bed – they are packed,” Hudson said. When traditional shelter beds can’t be found during the cold winter months, privately raised money from the 10 Bricks fund pays for hotel stays, or the cost of transportation to shelter elsewhere.

The organization’s homeless programs also offer income-based funding in the form of no-interest loans to help people experiencing homelessness pay security deposits and rent requirements to get into apartments of their own.

Hudson shared one story of why she has dedicated more than six years to her work at Tri-County CAP. Last year, she worked with a single mother with three children who was having a hard time getting on her feet financially and had been “couch surfing” to keep a roof over their heads. Through Tri-County’s programs and in collaboration with other local agencies, Hudson was able to help the family secure housing in a matter of days of applying for assistance.

“She and her children gave me a homemade gift, and she said, ‘You have no idea how much this means to us. We have a home now, and it’s been a while since we’ve had our own beds,’” Hudson said. “That’s why I do this work. It’s the mental money. This is a great community, and I want to help as much as I can and do good deeds to make it a better place.”

For more information on programs offered through Tri-County CAP’s Lebanon office or to make a donation to the FAP Gap or 10 Bricks funds, call (603) 443-6100 or email TCCAPAngel@Gmail.com.

Across from the Lebanon’s Colburn Park, nestled in the neighborhoods just where things begin to still and the road seems to take on an air of privacy, there is a small sign addressed “WISE” in front of a gray building with lavender trim and a ramp winding up the side. This is the Women’s Information Service (WISE), and this is where Lebanon fights domestic and sexual violence.

What began as a grassroots organization offering support and employment training to new mothers quickly transformed into one of the most determined organizations to end violence against women, children, and men after a shocking number of women reported accounts of domestic and sexual violence. WISE founders joined the New Hampshire Coalition and Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence to install a 24-hour crisis hotline, one of the many services WISE provides and for which the organization is most known.

WISE Executive Director Peggy O’Neil

“Most women can relate to an incident of violence or harassment that has happened to them. It is one of the main things women have in common even if we don’t have anything else in common with each other,” says WISE Executive Director Peggy O’Neil. According to a report released by the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault in January, one in five women are sexually assaulted in college.

Most rapes that occur – roughly 60 percent, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network – are not reported. In addition to disbelief, self-blaming, and the possible backlash that keeps victims from reporting assaults, researchers at the National Research Council have found trouble putting the numbers together for how often these crimes are committed because of the variations in the definition of rape.

“We get caught up in the language that we use. Sexual violence is any sexual act that is perpetrated against someone’s will and encompasses a range of offenses, including unwanted touch or communication where one person is inappropriately using their power over you,” says O’Neil. “The term ‘violence’ is really speaking to the whole spectrum of acts and language that women often endure – whether it is inappropriate comments, unwanted touch, getting groped on the subway, and being sexually assaulted.”

Jess Newkirk, WISE Program Advocate, reminding everyone that WISE listens and believes.

In response to a widespread spotlight on sexual violence and campus rape, WISE is among a global movement to stop violence against women, including the White House Task Force to Protect Students Against Sexual Violence, the federal Campus SaVE Act of 2013, and the celebrity-endorsed social media campaigns #yesallwomen and #BringBackOurGirls.

“We believe and have always believed that violence against women is a community issue. And the community has been a big part, a partner. As an organization, we can effect so much change when we can engage more people in discussion and then positive action to change it,” says O’Neil. “Just the sheer number of survivor stories that have been shared with advocates at WISE over the years, we have an organizational knowledge and wisdom. We just want to share that knowledge.”

WISE has been in service for more than 40 years, supporting 700 to 1,100 people a year.

“Overall, we have looked at the increased media attention, social media attention, and the debates as conversation which is powerful. What can help in preventing domestic and sexual violence is healthy relationships and respectful communication between people, and when it comes to sexual violence, to learn the language and tools of consent,” O’Neil says.

WISE has developed a Prevention Education Program that offers comprehensive, healthy relationship classes to the middle and high schools in the Upper Valley, usually through the school’s health program. The multi-session programs for students in grades eight through 10 can include anywhere from three to five classes. In addition, WISE provides professional training to local law enforcement and medical staff at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Dartmouth Medical School. WISE also works with other social service organizations.

“Lebanon is a very supportive community. It is very accessible. We wanted to have a permanent, physical presence in this area so that people could come here and they could participate,” O’Neil says. “With our physical, visible presence in Lebanon, we can start to break down some of the stigma and the silence that is often associated with sexual violence. With this location, we want to invite people here to have those conversations.”

WISE is located at 38 Bank Street in Lebanon. Learn more at http://www.wiseuv.org/.