What a Summer Job Can Start: Alliance and the City of Memphis MPLOY Program

A new group of young Memphians will spend part of their summer with us. Here is why that matters to our behavioral health organization.

Some Monday mornings tell you something about who you are.

This week, our New Hire Orientation room had some faces in it that we are especially proud of. Alongside the clinicians, case managers, and support staff joining us at Alliance Healthcare Services, we welcomed a group of young Memphians who are here through the City of Memphis MPLOY Youth Summer Experience.

They are teenagers and young adults. For some of them, this is one of the first real jobs they have ever held. And for 6 weeks, they are part of how the largest behavioral health nonprofit in Shelby County does its work.

Here is why a summer program for young people matters to an organization built around mental health, crisis care, and recovery.

What MPLOY is

MPLOY is the City of Memphis Youth Summer Experience, run by the city's Office of Youth Services.

The program connects Memphis residents between the ages of 14 and 22 with paid summer work. Over six weeks, participants do more than clock in. They take part in professional development built around the skills that open doors: career planning, goal setting, financial literacy, resume writing, and interviewing.

In other words, MPLOY is not only a paycheck for the summer, though the paycheck matters. It is a structured first step into the working world, with adults who are paying attention.

Each summer, employers across the city open their doors to host MPLOY participants. This year, Alliance is one of them.

Why a behavioral health organization said yes

Our mission is to promote wellness in the community, one person and one family at a time. Read that closely and you will notice it does not start in a clinic.

Wellness is bigger than treatment. It includes whether a young person has somewhere meaningful to be in the summer. It includes whether a teenager believes there is a place for them in the working world. It includes whether a family has a little more stability in July than they did in May.

A first job can do something quiet and powerful. It tells a young person: you are capable, you are wanted, and your time is worth something. For someone who has not heard that often enough, a summer of being counted on can change the way they see themselves.

We see the other side of that equation every day. We see what happens when young people grow up without enough of those signals. Investing early, before a crisis, is some of the most important work a community can do. Hosting MPLOY participants is a small, concrete way for us to be part of that investment.

What six weeks can offer

These are six-week summer positions. Nobody is being promised a career, and that is not the point.

The point is the experience itself.

For six weeks, a young Memphian gets to be inside a real workplace. They learn what it feels like to be relied on. They practice showing up, communicating, solving a problem they did not create, and finishing what they started. They earn money they can decide how to use, and they get coaching on what to do with it.

There is also something specific about spending that time inside a behavioral health organization. Many young people have never seen the helping professions up close. They may not know that careers exist in counseling, social work, peer support, nursing, and community health, or that those careers are within reach for someone who grew up right here. A summer with us can plant a seed that takes years to grow. We are glad to be the soil.

A partnership worth having

What makes this work is that it is a partnership.

The City of Memphis built MPLOY and recruits the young people. Employers like Alliance provide the workplace and the people who mentor them. Neither piece works alone. A program without host sites is just a waiting list. A host site without a program is just a job posting.

Together, the city and its employers create something a young person can actually walk into.

For Alliance, partnering with the city on its young people is a natural fit. We have served this community for over fifty years, across eighteen locations, reaching more than 22,000 people a year. We are not a visitor here. When the city invests in Memphis youth, we want our name on that list.

The MPLOY Summer Youth Experience is officially underway, and we are proud to share that we have successfully achieved our goal of employing more than 3,000 students across over 400 business sites throughout Memphis. Through this program, students gain real-world experience, develop professional skills, and build lasting connections within our community. -Brian E. Harris, Director, City of Memphis Office of Youth Services

Alliance is proud to be one of those more than 400 host sites, and to spend this summer investing in young Memphians right alongside the city.

The long view

A community gets healthier in ways you can measure and in ways you cannot.

You can measure crisis beds and outpatient appointments and the number of people we help keep out of jail and the hospital each year. Those numbers matter, and we work hard on them.

You cannot easily measure what happens when a young person spends a summer being treated like they have something to offer. But we believe it counts. We believe the community that shows up for its young people now is the community that will need us a little less later.

That is the kind of wellness that does not fit on a chart. It is still the work.

To the young people who are spending part of their summer with us: thank you for your time, your energy, and your willingness to try something new. You make the place better. We hope it does the same for you.

To learn more about Alliance Healthcare Services and our programs across Shelby County, visit alliance-hs.org or call (901) 369-1410. If you or someone you love is in a mental health crisis, help is available any time. Call our 24-hour crisis line at (901) 577-9400, or call or text 988.