The Real World Readiness (RWR) program started in 2018 as a partnership between the Northwest Maritime Center and Jefferson County Juvenile Services to create the opportunity for youth connected to the court system to gain both the durable skills of leadership, confidence, responsibility and teamwork, and the hard skills to potentially move into a maritime career. Since that time, we have served 29 young people, weathered a pandemic, and identified the need to expand our program to serve more youth and perhaps help prevent youth from entering the court system.  

Real World Readiness – Expanded Opportunities kicks off on March 15 with its spring cohort. This revamped program seeks to directly address two issues: 

• Washington state’s maritime sector is struggling to attract young people to maritime careers and remains desperately in need of trained workers across the sector’s many categories. As the average age within the workforce continues to climb and the “silver tsunami” of retirement gains momentum, the maritime industry finds itself facing immediate challenges in finding a skilled and diverse workforce.

• Youth from the Olympic Peninsula face many unique challenges due to our remote and rural landscape—both geographic and socioeconomic. Poverty in many Olympic Peninsula communities is high as a result of boom/bust economics and exacerbated by recent inflation. Poverty persists through generations, leaving many young people struggling to find opportunities to succeed. We wanted to provide young people in our area with alternative pathways into sustainable careers.

Our improved program will accept applications for youth connected to organizations such as schools, foster care, and social services, as well as the court system. The program is open to youth ages 16-24 local to our area who are in challenging situations, be that previous incarceration, issues with school attendance and engagement, or homelessness. We are partnering with Big Picture Learning and B-Unbound to help us to support students in identifying maritime interests and pathways and to connect students to maritime professionals throughout the region. 

The internship is split into two parts: 

• 80-hour NWMC Training Internship: This serves as a robust career exploration program. The participants get a deep awareness of the possibilities within the maritime industry through industry tours and a speaker series. Held at the NWMC, participants will also learn and practice job readiness skills and gain basic boatshop and on-the-water skills. 

• 60 or 120-hour External Industry Internship: Using the Harbor Freight Fellowship Initiative from project partners Big Picture Learning, RWR participants will work with industry mentors to gain valuable work experience in a professional environment. This will help connect youth to industry employers, and their experience will inform their next decisions regarding their education or training.

Upon completion of the Real World Readiness program, students will have had the opportunity to meet with regional maritime employers and workers, and learn about the different careers offered within the maritime industry. This, coupled with the skills and qualifications they obtain at the Northwest Maritime Center, will allow them to enter into a bustling maritime industry in our region, where they will be able to make a living wage and begin their careers.

This program is designed to offer an alternative learning environment for students whose strengths lie outside of the traditional classroom. The small cohort sizes facilitate a tailored, student-centered learning experience. Our instructors are literate in trauma-informed care, and we structure our program in a way that makes space for young people to bring their authentic selves to the table. 

One of the central themes of the feedback we receive from students is that they enjoy the opportunity to be creative in their learning, and to follow their noses in terms of the skills that they want to acquire. 

Joel Arrington has been teaching the Boatshop portion of the program for several years and is passionate about the unique way in which Real World Readiness engages young people from diverse backgrounds. Many students have complex lives, and so the structure of the program and size of the cohorts allows Joel to build crucial relationships with students which provide the bedrock of trust necessary for students to excel and push their boundaries. 

“The whole purpose of the program is to build meaningful working relationships with the students, so that they can build meaningful working relationships with the maritime industry,” says Arrington.

Students who have “found their calling” within the program in the past have been able to connect with other programs offered by the NWMC to build on their skills and expand their community. 

Real World Readiness has and will continue to change lives and break harmful cycles of socio-economic inequality and hardship in our community by providing an alternative pathway for young people to prepare to enter the workforce. 

Feature photo by Jeremy Johnson