Gov. Gina Raimondo announced the expansion of a program aimed at helping high school students gain hands-on experience in the workplace during a Monday morning speaking engagement at the Citizens Bank campus in Johnston.

Raimondo was on hand for the PrepareRI employers breakfast, which hosted current and prospective businesses and organizations that take on students for the initiative. PrepareRI, according to its website, seeks to “prepare all Rhode Island youth with the skills they need for jobs that pay.” There is also a PrepareRI program offered to college students at CCRI, Rhode Island College and the University of Rhode Island.

PrepareRI is part of a larger effort called Skills for Rhode Island’s Future, or Skills RI.

“Access to skills to get a job, that’s what this is all about,” Raimondo said. “The states and cities that have the highest-skilled workforce will be the strongest economies in this economy, period … We have businesses – like Gilbane and Citizens and Bank of America – many of you say, ‘I’m in, because I care about Rhode Island. I want to do my part.’ We have philanthropists who have stepped up again and again, we have volunteers and the government stepping up to say, ‘We believe in Rhode Island, we believe everyone should have a chance.”

Rhode Island Department of Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green lauded the work of Raimondo and executive director of Skills RI Nina Pande for their work in building the program.

“What was interesting about Nina is that her commitment to the students wasn’t just about talk. It was about making it happen,” Infante-Green said. “I had an opportunity to go to one of the worksites with Nina, and what was amazing was one of our students was actually solving a problem for a business. There was a cog that this 16-year-old was inventing, really creating that for that organization. He was given a problem and he came up with a solution. Our kids can do it, what we have to do is provide them with the opportunity.”

John Sinnott, vice president of Gilbane Building Co. and chairman of the board for Skills for Rhode Island’s Future, said PrepareRI has grown exponentially in just three years of existence. In its first year, 162 high school students took part, and that figure more than doubled the next time around to 326.

Sinnott and Citizens Bank head of corporate affairs Barbara Cottam both confirmed that the program is looking at 425 students in year three. Raimondo broke news when she stepped to the podium, though, that PrepareRI is poised to grow even larger in scale.

Raimondo said American Student Assistance, a nonprofit based out of Boston, is awarding a three-year, $1.5 million grant to increase the scope of the project. The governor said the funds will go toward adding more students into the fold, as well as hiring three coaches.

“What we’ve learned in the process of doing this is that coaching matters,” Raimondo said. “The young people need a little more coaching and advising, so not only are we scaling but we’re making it more effective … Thousands of young people, from every walk of life, will have an opportunity to have a good life and a good career, and that’s because you showed up today [and] you’re showing up every day to take care of these kids.”

ASA President and CEO Jean Eddy joined Raimondo in thanking the companies that take part in PrepareRI, saying that they offer students an opportunity to gain knowledge “that simply cannot be learned in the classroom.”

“According to a report from Brookings, 40 years ago nearly 60 percent of American teenagers were employed, an all-time high,” Eddy said. “Today, just over 35 percent of teens are part of the workforce. While there were many valid reasons for this decline — such as more time committed to school, participation in extracurricular activities — it means students are not exposed to the work-based skills they'll need to get into the workforce later in life.”

There were various testimonials to the program’s merits, both in-person and scattered around the event room. Poster boards were stationed on each side featuring stories of students who have come through PrepareRI, including Elinette from Cranston, who was placed at Home Health & Hospice Care of Nursing Placement.

“I went from being shy to bursting out of my shell,” she wrote. “It was my first job and the best part is that I was able to see what the real working environment is like – from good days to crazy days, and they ended up hiring me when the internship ended. All of the employees help each other and are as close as family.”

Another spotlight centered on Zachary, an intern out of Pilgrim High School in Warwick who spent the summer at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. He said the internship helped him realize he wanted to major in law, and he is headed to Roger Williams University this fall.

“Highlights included working on strategic advocacy efforts, attending board meetings, networking with members, and participating in roundtables with federal delegations,” he wrote. “It was a very unique opportunity for someone my age, especially meeting so many political figures! Experiencing firsthand what it is like to work in a professional setting will help me when I enter the work world in a few years, and for that I am grateful.”

A few interns shared their experience on stage as well during a brief panel after speakers had finished. Virsavia Goretoy of West Warwick High School interned at Citizens, and spoke glowingly of her time working with colleagues whom she said “were my cheerleaders basically.”

They knew what I was capable of, that I didn’t know I was capable of,” Goretoy said. “Going in, I didn’t know what I wanted to be occupied in, but learning about the different departments within departments and the different skills that you need for each of these, it helps me to narrow down how my skills played into different aspects of these departments.”

Cumberland High School’s Jonathan Weigand spent his summer with Gilbane, saying he was very nervous heading into his internship. He said he didn’t know what to expect, worrying he may be sequestered in a cubicle for eight hours a day.

It ended up being nothing like what he feared.

“Thankfully, that was not the case,” Weigand said. “What I found was a very nurturing environment. I was very fortunate to get the rotation that I did … I think that a common problem with students in Rhode Island right now is that people perceive Rhode Island as a dead market. There’s no business in Rhode Island, a lot of kids in my school talk about leaving. The internship’s shown me that I don't need to leave Rhode Island to have opportunities. There’s a whole business sector that a lot of people don’t know about, and there’s a lot of jobs just waiting to be taken.”