In 2024, Our Community’s Children (OCC) was awarded a three-year $75,000 grant to support its GRow1000 Employers’ Community of Practice (CoP). GRow1000 launched in summer of 2020 as a community effort to provide Grand Rapids youth with summer employment. Its Employers’ Community of Practice was later launched to helps employers to best support GRow1000 youth in likely their first professional jobs, by building the internal systems and structures needed to effectively onboard and retain them through the summer.

Hear from program OCC Executive Director Shannon Harris and GRow1000 staff, participants, and employers as they share their insights into GRow1000 and the Employer Community of Practice.