Stephanie Gidigbi (left) and Samuel Charles.

"People often comment that I handle myself professionally. I speak well, am polite, dress well. All of that is true. What they don't have a sense of is what I have gone through in my life to get where I am and how the DSY has helped me get there. I was born and raised in Newark by my mom. I have two sisters. My mom was a nursing assistant, still is, and works so hard for all of us. At the end of my freshman year of high school someone set our apartment building on fire. We were burned out, and my family had to split up. We became homeless overnight. My friends tried to help by saying, "I know how it is,” but they really couldn't know how it was. I was staying with a friend's family. One day I came home early; no one was home. I stayed outside in the rain for several hours. I didn't have a home for about five months until my mom found us a way to be back together again. All of us still feel the effects of having been homeless.

During this time I met the DSY. My teacher told me that this would help me get ready for the real world—that I could be successful, but that there were some things I had to learn, like what it meant to really work hard. I definitely learned that in the DSY: I had to be on time, couldn't miss a day, had to follow through and complete assignments, and I had to fully participate in the workshop activities even when I didn't feel like it. The DSY experience was invaluable in helping me navigate the college application process, and I am excited to be starting at Rutgers in the fall. However, I haven't succeeded at everything, and the DSY also taught me how to grow from my failures. I thought I could handle continuing my internship after the summer and also manage my senior year. But I couldn't do it. As you learn in the DSY, there are some things that you want to do in life but you have to come to terms with the fact that you might not yet know how to do them. I call that the DSY reality check. Thank you so much for your support for the program that changed my life.”

"When I met the All Stars and the DSY, I was a 16-year-old with a huge chip on my shoulder. I thought I knew it all. I thought I had it together. In fact, I called the All Stars because I thought I was in a good position to help and mentor younger kids.

So you can imagine how surprised and angry I was when, as a new student in the DSY, I was challenged to grow by Gloria and the business volunteers in the program. They challenged me to give up my attitude about dressing for business, for example. But I wasn't about to fit into someone else's mold.

For about nine of the thirteen weeks of the program I held onto my position. And Gloria and the business people hung in there with me. They didn't get frustrated or angry. They worked hard to teach me how the world worked, that how I dressed really would determine how people responded to me, and that I could approach it as a performance — I could be a professional and be the real me. One day towards the end of the program, I got it. Life is a performance. I realized that I could be Stephanie, the hip, cool teenager, and Stephanie, the working professional—and much, much more. I embraced that, and a new world opened up to me. I had a wonderful internship at Navigant Consulting. Through my DSY network I am now working at Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman and Dicker, and looking forward to a law or diplomatic career.

I want to thank all of the DSY's business supporters from the bottom of my heart for investing in us, teaching us and supporting us to grow.”