Children start applying for jobs when they reach 16, but before that time comes, children that undergo the Boys & Girls Club’s Leadership in Training program can gain real experience in what holding a job is actually like.

Leadership in Training, known as L.I.T for short, is a nationwide Boys & Girls Club program that aims to teach children job skills.

“Some clubs do the L.I.T program and some clubs don’t,” Jarrin Rozenblad, teen specialist at the Boys & Girls Club McKee branch, said. “(L.I.T) shows kids what it is like to have a real job at a younger age than they could actually have a job.”

Even though the children who are in the program are technically just volunteers, they are seen as essential to the club’s daily activates.

“A majority of their time is spent volunteering on the youth side,” Rozenblad said. “So they are put in different areas like gym, the art room or with different age groups. They are an essential part of our schedule work because they help with cleanup after lunches, facility changes and sometimes they are group leaders.”

Before the L.I.T volunteers start working at the club they first have to go through a class that is similar to the process of going through a job orientation.

“In the beginning they take a class which gears them up for job preparedness,” Rozenblad said. “So we work on resume building, interview practice and we help with their application to become a L.I.T. Everything that you would talk about at a regular job orientation, just spread out over a couple of weeks.”

The Boys & Girls Club McKee Branch has, along with the rest of the clubs in greater Scottsdale, combined their L.I.T program to cover not just job skills like interviewing, but also financial skills as well as college prep.

“(L.I.T) is literally three programs put together,” Rozenblad said “It is the first year we have done it like that. We normally just do career, but all the branches came together with our team meeting and decide to put them together because they work so well together.”

One of the programs that has been merged with L.I.T is called Money Matters.

“Money Matters has the kids manage the Tiki Hut for part of the summer,” Rozenblad explained. “It acts as their fundraiser to go on a trip to California at the end of the summer. Along with the Tiki Hut, they use a penny carnival and camp nights to raise the funds.”

The Boys & Girls Club also partnered with Washington Federal bank to assist them with the Money Matters program.

“(Washington Federal) sent out a rep and she is kind of like the story manager,” Rozenblad said. “She created opening and closing procedures and inventory and transaction sheets for the kids to fill out.”

The Washington Federal rep, Mary Buck, also took the opportunity to teach the kids about budgeting in their daily lives so they could save money to, say, buy their parents holiday gifts.

The other program rolled into L.I.T this year is Diploma to Degrees, which aims to get kids thinking about college.

“At Friday meetings the kids start to take first steps of tracking their interest up through college,” Rozenblad explained. “Now, we don’t go the full way because most of the kids are in middle school, but if their focus area is engineering then we find out what steps they can take now in middle school. We also cover the basics like applying for college.”

With the inclusion of the Diploma to Degrees program, the trip to California that the kids have been saving up for is extended by a day to visit a college campus.

“When we go to California this year it will be a two-day trip,” Rozenblad said. “We are going to UCLA to break down and observe what college life is like. The kids are going to do a scavenger hunt that will take them all around campus.”

Along with the trip to UCLA, the L.I.T volunteers will get to go to the beach and an amusement park with the money they raised during their time with L.I.T.