The end of summer is always a little sad at Puente. It’s when the youth interns who worked with Puente’s summer program – officially the Youth Leadership Development and Employment Program – are ready to go back to school. The Puente offices, filled with their energy and laughter, start to empty out. “They leave here every summer with new skills, and Puente is enriched by them,” says Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente. “They’re all rock stars as far as I’m concerned.” The summer program, now in its eighth year, offers students as young as 14 the chance to earn a salary, take on serious work responsibilities and spend the summer making new friends. They worked as junior counselors at YMCA Camp Jones Gulch, teacher’s aides, cooks for the school district, at the Half Moon Bay Library, at Pie Ranch, South Coast Children’s Services, and in the office at Puente, helping organize programs, doing office work and providing child care. But that’s not all that happens. Puente program coordinators say the young people change a lot during each summer, and over the course of several years, emerge as confident, self-directed young adults. “You can never predict at the beginning of the summer who is really going to shine,” says Lobel. Take Omar Macias, a self-avowed ‘troublemaker’ who earned a reputation … Continue reading I never really felt I had it in me: Puente’s summer youth program changes lives