Chattanooga employers sign up to hire Step-Up Chattanooga summer interns

Across the county 40 businesses, nonprofits and organizations are committed to hiring low-income Hamilton County high school students this summer for an internship through Step-Up Chattanooga.

And the Public Education Foundation hopes more employers will volunteer to get involved.

This is a screenshot of the Step-Up Chattanooga website.

President of Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation, Dan Challener, talks to reporters at the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2014.

Step-Up Chattanooga was launched earlier this spring by PEF and the Hamilton County Department of Education. The program provides low-income juniors and seniors with paid internships designed to train and connect them with employers.

This program is modeled after Step-Up Minneapolis, which successfully connected 21,000 students with employers over a decade. Ninety six percent of those supervisors reported that their students made valuable contributions to their companies' workplace.

"Thousands of those students have subsequently been hired by Minneapolis businesses — giving those businesses well-trained, local talent and providing those students with life-changing employment," PEF President Dan Challener previously told the Times Free Press. "This is exactly what we want to do in our community."

Step-Up Chattanooga has already recruited local high school students and is providing work readiness training designed to help them be successful in interviews and a professional setting.

Throughout the summer the 100 students hired will be given meaningful work at their place of employment, and students will receive support and feedback from Step-Up staff and supervisors at their job, according to a press release from PEF.

For more information about becoming a business partner, visit stepupchattanooga.org.