Building Bridges to Careers (BB2C)
Who Are We?
Since its founding in August 2012, Building Bridges to Careers (BB2C) has collaborated with, built, adapted, and supported programs and projects in Washington County as a parallel organization to school districts to address youth and career development. With our defined mission to foster student, business, and community relationships that inspire career choice through experience, entrepreneurship, and education, BB2C has now expanded our outreach over the last five years to support the Appalachian counties in Southeast Ohio. According to our Executive Director, Dr. Tasha Werry, “BB2C is working to coordinate, not duplicate, the efforts of others that are also trying to craft sustainable solutions in the areas of youth and workforce development.”
How Can We Help You?
BB2C serves as a bridge spanner between schools, employers, and the community. The programs we develop are designed specifically to connect students directly with employers and connect employers to their future workforce through in-person experiences like job shadowing, internships, tours, mentoring, etc. Our signature high school internship program was initially piloted in 2016. This program draws a direct line between an individual and an employer, allowing both to make decisions based on facts and personal experience. Implementing a high school internship program successfully requires a great deal of coordination and the collaboration of parents, students, schools, and employers.
Over the last three years, the internship program has experienced the most success with widespread implementation for a combination of reasons. The BB2C Network includes 35 individuals, organizations, and/or communities (which may be identified by a school district) that are in some phase of implementing youth and workforce development initiatives and innovations. BB2C communicates with each one regularly to continue providing support, connections, coaching, program advice, and any problem solving that is needed—as an intermediary, BB2C adapts to the needs of those we support. BB2C also directly partners with 11 established, regional organizations that connect to the youth and workforce development ecosystem. Three of these regional organizations—Appalachian Children Coalition, Appalachian Ohio Manufacturers’ Organization, and Rural Action—collaborated with BB2C to expand the high school internship program beyond isolated cases to a broader region with greater impact.
While challenging to implement throughout the southeast region, the state-funded High School Tech Internship Program was the impetus for BB2C’s fast paced development and adaptations that had to work for each individual situation. Between Fall 2023 and Summer 2024, 390 students interned with 155 businesses in 23 counties, earning a combined $277,532 in stipends and wages. Some of these students remained employed by their host site.
In rural areas, and especially with smaller size businesses, the typical ways to find employees don’t always work (e.g., posting jobs on Indeed, social media, newspapers, etc.). Additionally, some employers don’t post jobs at all. Dr. Werry emphasized, “Where BB2C helps is through our connection to the local K12 Workforce Ecosystem. Employers that intentionally engage with this ecosystem are connected and are more in the know than those that are not engaged. Finding employees is still about ‘who you know’, and you know more people when you are engaged and participate in the programs implemented by the ecosystem.”
Describing how employers can actively engage with the BB2C to further workforce development in Southeast Ohio, Dr. Werry says, “There are multiple ways to engage with BB2C. The simplest being the Business Advisory Council meetings that are open to the community and held 4 times a year. One of these meetings is our annual Family Career Fest event. Other ways to engage include programs like: Career Mentoring, Career Speaker Series, Discover Day Series, Job Shadows, multiple camps with various career fields of focus, intentional networking events, and professional development that includes teachers who are the gatekeepers to their classrooms. Employers are also encouraged to call us and talk through ideas as you never know what we might be able to create together.”