Many teens look forward to getting a job as a first step toward independence. For “opportunity youth,” (young men and women who are both out of school and out of work), landing a first job with a blank resume and limited education often proves difficult. To help these youths forge a career path, CVS Health (one of Fair360, formerly DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies), along with more than three dozen other companies, became a founding member of the White House’sFirst Job Compact.
Building a Path
As a founding member of the First Job Compact, CVS Health is committed to investing in partnerships and programs that help attract opportunity youth to careers in pharmacy and health care. Demand for qualified health professionals is rising at unprecedented levels, and the company has a strong track record of hiring youth into their first jobs, including introducing more than one million underserved young people to the pharmacy profession through the Pathways to Pharmacy program.
Success Stories
For Tavyia G., the program represented more than just a job it helped her discover her profession. According to Tavyia:
“I first became aware of the Atlanta Tech/CVS Extern Program via my high school counselor. At the time, I knew that I belonged in the health care field, but was unaware of what capacity of health care. As I learned more about the program, I became eager and jumped at the opportunity.
After completion of the program and working side by side with compassionate and dedicated pharmacists, I learned a great deal about the profession, and pharmacy became a career field of choice. The Atlanta Tech/CVS Extern Program provided me with an irreplaceable, life-changing experience and the realization that I was meant to be a pharmacist. It is my goal to mentor students and provide a positive experience similar to the one that I was afforded.”
Tavyia not only achieved her goal of becoming a pharmacist, she was promoted to Pharmacy Manager in her store.
Video: How CVS Health’s partnership with Goodwill helped Jasmine A. on her path to a career in pharmacy:
Promoting STEM Careers Among Younger Students
Building on the success of Pathways to Pharmacy, CVS Health is preparing to launch myCVS Journey, an age-appropriate series of new STEM-enriched programs designed to open the doors to children and young adults to a more expansive career path in health care, including pharmacy, professional management, nursing, and information technology. This school-to-career initiative aims to engage 30,000 students per year, from elementary school through middle school.
