Spotlight: SoDo Inc.
“I was just waiting for a door to open.”
Ryan, 24, was serving 10 months in prison. In his search for a job while on work release, he applied to hundreds of low-skill jobs—with no success.“I probably went to 200 places and put in my resume—every fast-food place from Des Moines to Shoreline,” he says.
But when he discovered SoDo Inc., he found something he never expected. Through this Youth@Work partnership between YouthSource (King County) and South Seattle Community College, students spent three weeks on campus exploring the industrial trades, followed by three weeks in an internship with a private company.
Ryan’s internship was at Washington Chain, a maritime supply company in SoDo. The company didn’t intend to hire a new employee, but having seen Ryan’s work ethic and willingness to learn, they offered him a permanent job—a union job with a future.
For the first time, Ryan can support himself and his young children. “It’s one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he says. “I had already given myself a kick in the butt—I was just waiting for a door to open.”
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