YOUNGSTOWN — Inspiring Minds is looking for local businesses and small companies to provide summer internships for area high school seniors and college students that will provide work experience in career fields of interest to the young adults.

The four-year-old program provides eight- to 12-week summer internships designed to provide experiences in careers and provide companies a diverse population of job candidates from the region, according to Jordan Wilkins, who is the transition coordinator of Inspiring Minds Summer Career Development Program.

Inspiring Minds is an organization based in Youngstown that was started in 2005 by Deryck Toles. It provides free after-school and summer programming to more than 500 kindergarten through 12th grade students annually in multiple cities around the country.

Year-round programming focuses on five areas: education, college and career readiness, exposure to new experiences, health and wellness, and personal development.

“We have 25 people whom we would like to place in internships,” said Wilkins, who also coordinates the internship program. “We have worked with 15 companies and organizations that have provided internships in the past and now have 12 committed to provide internships this summer. We need 13 more companies.”

Sarah Lowry, director of Healthy Community Partnership at the Youngstown Foundation, said the Google Drive programming that Inspiring Minds intern Delonte Williamson provided to her organization in 2019 is still invaluable more than a year after he has moved on to other job opportunities.

“He was really instrumental in helping us develop our communication management system,” she said. “He created videos spotlighting the work of our partner organizations that we are still using.”

“We are still using it,” Lowry said. “We’ve used it through the pandemic.”

Healthy Community Partnership is a program that encourages healthy lifestyles to residents of Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

When told about Inspiring Minds internship, Lowry thought it would be beneficial to both the Youngstown Foundation, which wanted to make inroads into community, and to any intern wanting to become involved with work focused on community development.

Williamson’s job was to improve internal communications and to tell the wider community about the work of the foundation’s partner organizations.

“He did it very well,” Lowry said. “I do not believe Inspiring Minds operated its summer internship program last summer due to the pandemic, but we would be glad to work with an intern this summer.”

While Healthy Community Partnership has worked with students doing academic studies, Williamson, a Kent State University at Trumbull campus student, was the first paid intern who worked with them.

“It was beneficial to both sides,” Lowry said.

Wilkins suggests providing these internships are an investment in the area’s future, because it will slow the “brain drain” of talented young people growing up here and leaving the area because they cannot find opportunities.

Internships range from students working in business offices, in health care administration, in public schools and higher education institutions, banking and in communication companies.

Angela Massacci, who manages the perioperative nurses program at St. Joseph Warren Hospital, has had several interns from Inspiring Minds work there.

“I love what Deryck Toles is doing with young people,” Massacci said. “I applied for and received a grant from the Mercy Health Foundation, so I would be able to pay the interns.”

“Through this program we offer interns exposure to the health care industry, so they can decide if this is really what they want to do,” she said.

Massacci expressed concerned that the heath care industry is lacking in diversity, so this program can introduce more young people.

Celeste Harris, 20, who has been working with Inspiring Minds since she was in the seventh grade, was one of the first to participate in the summer internship program. Attending Howard University’s nursing school in Washington D.C., the Warren G. Harding graduate also has been an intern at St. Joseph every summer when she returns home.

“This has allowed me to see what nurses do every day,” she said. “I’ve been able to see the administrative work and working with patients.”

The internship has made Harris confident she made the right decision to become a labor and delivery nurse.

“It is a job that has its ups and downs,” Harris said. “There is a joy helping people when they are hurt.

Companies that are interested in providing internships can contact Wilkins at future@imwarren.org or call 330-469-6729.

rsmith@tribtoday.com