By Natane Ammons
Thursday, February 26, 2015. The Inglewood/Airport Area Chamber of Commerce’s Education Committee has once again put together another successful Youth Business and Industry Job Shadow Day Event. The event took place on Thursday, February 26, 2015. This year the Chamber partnered with Inglewood Unified School District, the City of Inglewood, and the South Bay Workforce Investment Board in order to provide a more comprehensive program to help young adults develop job skills needed for success.
The students, school counselors and Education Committee members gathered together
in the Inglewood Library Lecture Hall in the wee morning hours of 7:30 a.m. The students arrived promptly and were dressed for success. The morning kicked off with a ceremonial pom and circumstance performed by music students from Delian Music. After a very powerful opening speech provided by District 2’s Councilman Alex Padilla, the students were disbursed to various business sites from Downtown Los Angeles to right here in our home town of Inglewood, California.
Upon the students return from their various business sites visited and lunch with their business hosts, students were asked to turn in evaluation forms and reflection forms in return for a raffle ticket and informational bags (containing literature on youth job resources and Employment fairs offered by the South Bay Workforce Investment Board) provided by Los Angeles World Airports. Over 50 prizes were raffled off amongst the eager students. One student in particular received the grand prize raffle drawing of free guitar lessons and a 
guitar donated by Delian Music!
Youth Business and Industry Job Shadow Day is an event that attempts to match Inglewood students with a business of their choice for a day in order to give the students a chance to experience first hand how that business actually operates. It is the hope of the Education Committee that this will assist students in making solid career choices, and open up new areas for students who might be undecided in future career choices.
During the past thirty-three years, this event has been very successful. Our member businesses were able to place over 150 students for the day.
We look forward to more businesses participating next year by pledging to host students at your place of business to observe workers in action and learn about the skills needed to be productive in the world of work.