“The representation piece matters”— an interview with Caelan Keenan, youth program manager at Vermont Works for Women
Caelan Keenan, youth program manager at Vermont Works for Women. Image courtesy of Vermont Works for Women website
Growing up, Caelan Keenan, like many other women, did not have exposure to traditionally male-dominated STEM and trade fields. Who said girls can’t be electricians?Or plumbers? Or computer scientists?
Keenan is the Youth Program manager for Vermont Works for Women, a non-profit organization with an office in Winooski, that supports women and youth through career exploration, training, workshops, and mentorship to find and succeed in careers they love.
“In our Rosie’s Girls camps and afterschool programs, part of the day is spent working on projects, so they will learn to use a bunch of different carpentry tools, they’ll build bookshelves, picture frames, and toolboxes all out of wood,” Keenan said in a recent phone interview. “Or they might learn to weld and build all sorts of cool sculptures out of metal. They are doing these things that are traditionally male-dominated fields.”
With youth programs, such as Rosie’s Girls camps and after-school programs. Keenan, gives the next generation the opportunities that she did not have.
What does it mean to be the Youth Program Manager?
I work to find opportunities for girls and gender-expansive youth to explore all sorts of career pathways, but we put a special emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and trade careers as they are traditionally areas where women are underrepresented.
We really don’t try to push students toward any particular field. My goal is that they have opportunities to try all of them and make an informed decision about what they want to do with their lives. So, even if a student is interested in nursing, and women are very well represented in the nursing field, we are not dissuading kids from entering those fields, we are just making sure they have also tried welding, carpentry, and computers.
Have you noticed a difference in the younger generation’s interest in these fields?
We are seeing more female students, girls, gender-expansive students, who have an interest in these fields and are willing to step in and give it a try even if they are intimidated, and even if they look around and it’s mostly boys who are interested in that sort of thing.
The workforce hasn’t changed. We are trying, and there are more women in all of these fields, but we are not at a place yet where the gender norms have changed significantly. I think what we are noticing is a subtle improvement, but we are not there yet.
What we do see every time we offer a summer camp or an after-school program is that they are so excited to have the opportunity. Students engage in it really deeply, especially because it’s a room full of people who look like them. They are not the only girl trying something for the first time, and that seems to be what really makes the difference between them trying and sitting on the sidelines.
What sort of feedback have you gotten from your students?
We just held our Women Can Do Conference last Thursday, a STEM and trades career exploration fair and conference. We had all sorts of things for them to try. Businesses from the STEM and trade fields came.
We have them take a survey at the end. Almost all of them who responded said that to have women better represented in some of these fields, students at their age and younger just need more exposure.
They need more opportunities like that conference, and all sorts of hands-on opportunities to try these different fields and meet people and women who work in them. The representation piece matters.
What are the aims or goals of the different programs?
All of our youth programs work toward three outcomes. Those three outcomes include increased connection, between their peers but also a sense of connection with adults and mentors, and some of that is also around friendship development and communication skills.
The next outcome is an expanded sense of possibility, that light bulb moment we want kids to have around, “Oh, I never considered I could drive this snow plow, but that’s really cool and I am capable of that” or “I had no idea that I could be interested in coding, and I know I’m interested because I did this program.”
And the third outcome is increased confidence. We want all kids who go through our programming to walk away feeling more confident and sure of themselves.
How do adult programs differ in their aims or goals?
Some of the program goals are for women to enter a new career field, others could be reentering the community safely and healthily after being incarcerated. With adults, our outcomes and our goals are more targeted or individualized.
How does your organization support the diverse needs of Winooski?
We value the opportunity to work with students, families, and schools in Winooski because so many different cultures are represented. It is really helpful for us to know if those outcomes, activities, and topics resonate with different cultures, or how they resonate with different cultures.
We have a part of the program called Power Skills, which are social and emotional activities that we do with the kids. Most of them are around talking about topics relevant to middle school girls and giving them a safe space to be in life together.
For some students, they might want to talk about menstruation. Different cultures are going to talk about that topic in different ways. The same might be said for women in the workforce and what norms or traditions exist for different cultures around women and employment in non-traditional career fields.
As a New American student, as a refugee who has settled in Winooski, they might be interested or need to talk about things that are very different from a traditional white Vermont student whose family has been living here for generations. So, for us, that diversity of experience is really valuable.
We learn a lot more from them than they do from us.
Julia Murdick, an environmental studies major and digital media and communications minor at Saint Michael’s College, works on the campus farm.