A group of Friends First matches recently spent a Saturday morning learning valuable skills for the future when our friends at Swoon held a Career Day at Mercy Home.

A group of Swoon employees set up three sessions for our matches where they learned valuable skills and explored a number of career options for their futures.

The first session was “Voyage Through Life,” in which our kids played a life-sized board game and landed on spaces where they made good or bad decisions. They could move forward on the board if they landed on enough good decision spaces, such as finishing homework. They would be sent back for bad decision spaces, such as getting suspended from school.

Another session was “How to Present Yourself Online and In Person” in which the kids learned how to manage any social media profiles they had to reflect a professional persona. They also had a chance to practice writing thank you notes.

The third session was “When Life Give You Lemons, Start a Business.” The matches had a chance to learn about the steps to set up a business, and then they came up with a business idea of their own and presented it to the group.

According to Jessica Henry, the Marketing Communications Specialist at Swoon who helped run one of the sessions, the group at Swoon held two brainstorming sessions to decide what skills they wanted to teach the kids who attended Career Day. “We all got together and decided what would be best to teach the kids about their future careers while still being interactive and entertaining,” she said. “We wanted to make sure to teach the importance of your presence online as well as show them that if they work and set their minds to it, anything is possible.” Joshua, who attended the Career Day with his mentor Jake, liked the process of setting up his own business best and was inspired to give it a try in the future. “[I learned] entrepreneurship isn’t really that hard if you think about it,” he said. “I wanted to create a business [in the past], but I thought maybe I shouldn’t.”

After each group rotated through all the sessions, they came together to reflect on what they learned that day and thank the Swoon volunteers for their time. The day concluded with everyone enjoying a delicious lunch together and even some impromptu dance performances from the young ladies! We are so thankful to everyone at Swoon who made this fun and educational day possible for our kids!