Baltimore’s summer jobs program, YouthWorks, and the local youth leadership enrichment organization, The Be. Org, are collaborating to teach virtual reality development skills to the city’s young people.

The Be. Org and YouthWorks will enroll fifteen students through the former’s Be. virtual program that teaches game development and programming with a focus on VR tech. The students learn how to code for virtual reality using Unity to build VR games based on The Be. Org’s own educational content.

The organization facilitates social and emotional learning for youth and imparts them with soft and life skills usually left out by conventional classroom curricula. Tonee Lawson, The Be. Org’s Executive Director explained that the organization builds experiential learning into its premise to keep participants engaged with the products they create.

“Experiential learning has a higher content retention rate,” said Lawson. “Our students get to be the end-users of the content. They learn it, they create it, they get to test it out and [also] use it.”

YouthWorks is Baltimore’s summer jobs initiative supported by the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. The collaboration between the two entities will enable students to learn STEM skills through the five-week program. The participants will showcase what they’ve learned and created at a demo day on August 5 and receive an industry credential to give them a head start within the workforce.

The program is being hosted in person at ConneXions, an arts-focused charter high school near Hanlon Park.

Lawson further remarked that the program could strengthen its offering with the support of tech industry professionals to serve as mentors for the participants. They can come and interact with the students over the five weeks to give a first-hand experience of the possibilities and opportunities a career in tech has on offer.

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