PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire Career Center's internship program prepares high school students for the workforce by introducing them to employers and enrichment opportunities. 

 

The North County Internship Program, in its 11th year, had seven participating youths. 

 

Youth Program Director Heather Shogry-Williams told the Berkshire Workforce Board at its meeting last week that the program recently received a donation of $5,000 from Crane & Co. to help two of the students to continue with their work experiences during the first part of their school years.

 

Youth program specialist Kathleen Toomey said the interns were happy with their work. Many worked at Porches Inn, Lickety-Split at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Roots Teen Center, and Brayton Elementary School, all in North Adams. 

 

Toomey said the employers were happy with the youths' work and that the teens were very interested and connected with the other programs they were in.

 

"Just shows, really on both sides, how we're benefiting the youth and the employer. Here are a couple other just things I'll just quickly mention, is that in our interviews with the youth, they really stress the importance of the Career Center staff and their support. I didn't even ask, and they brought up other workshops that were outside of this program, that they got connected to through the program," Toomey said.

 

Williams texplained the career readiness enrichment that staff across the county worked on to expand on their career readiness models and systems.

 

"A lot of enrichment work has taken place, which helps to expand upon their career readiness models every year. We were very fortunate to be able to utilize some of our additional connecting activities funds this past year to support additional summer work for our career readiness coordinators and team members in our central and North County schools as well," she said. "Some of this work included developing career readiness lessons for middle school students, community-service learning projects and enhanced career readiness activities. 

 

"So a lot of this career readiness enrichment work continues to take place over the summer, and you know, as I mentioned, it's really helping to set the stage for school districts' continued expansion of our career readiness model."

 

The Pittsfield Public Schools interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips, who attended the meeting, said she was excited to collaborate with the team.

 

"I was encouraged to hear that collaboration is one of your priorities, because that's also one of my core values as I lead school district work, and I recognize the importance of the alignment of schools with workforce needs. So that is something I'm very committed to continuing, not only for our high schools, but also for our middle schools," Phillips said. "Right now we are going through a middle school restructuring, and we'll have a fifth, sixth grade campus and a seventh, eighth grade campus, and as we design the school program, the instructional program. 

 

"We're very much interested in providing early career exploration opportunities for our seventh and eighth graders and aligning that work with our high school Pathways."

 

Industry Relations Manager Bryana Malloy said training and partnerships have been working really well for postsecondary Career Technical Initiative training at McCann Technical School in North Adams and Taconic High in Pittsfield. 

 

"We have enrolled 328 trainings throughout nine training programs. So as you can see, certified nursing assistants. We have very high numbers. It's a very high need here in the region. So we've enrolled 148 and of that, 134 have completed," she said. "We also offer partnerships with Berkshire Health Systems and CHP for medical assistant training, where we have 69 enrolled, 32 are still in progress, with 25 completed."

 

Other good news was that Career Center had surpassed its goals supporting businesses and jobseekers in several ways during fiscal 2025.

 

Executive Director Pamela Wojtkowski told the board that the center had served 875 business, 200 more than its goal. It also exceeded its goals to serve 225 new businesses by 61 and 450 repeat businesses by 139.

 

The center held 117 recruitment activities during the year, and 799 marketing and outreach activities. The career center also served thousands of job seekers.

 

"Total job seekers served, our annual plan was to serve 3,250 and we actually did serve 4,194 total visits to the Career Center. We had 13,979 various visits to the Career Center. And total workshops that we did to prepare job seekers was 2,401," Wojtkowski said.

 

The center will hold an English for Employment Workshop will starting Tuesday, Sept. 16, and the veterans annual job and resource fair will take place Oct. 13. Forty translation devices were purchased after an employer requested them and they will be utilized at various sites to help with recruiting and onboarding.

 

In other business, the board welcomed six new members to the board; Betsy Andrus, executive director of the South Berkshire Chamber of Commerce; Kaylyn Kern, director of operations for Bosquest Sport; John Cadiz, director of human resources at 18 Degrees Inc.; Brenda Stokes, executive director of human resources for Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts; Makayla-Courtney McGeeney, marketing consultant for the North Adams Chamber of Commerce, and Libby Hernandez, migrant seasonal farm worker outreach specialist for the state Executive Office of Labor & Workforce Development.

 

Also highlighted was the summer 2025 Workforce Impact Awards, congratulating the winners again.