Like most teenagers, Malachi Samuels was excited to graduate Wareham High School in 2024 and felt more than prepared to “leave the bubble” of his hometown thanks to a unique internship.

The 19-year-old Samuels became a Community Youth Empowerment intern his junior year of high school. As an intern he had an opportunity to help the youth-outreach organization with community events, attend life-skill workshops and job fairs and receive mentorship and a college scholarship.

To become an intern, area high school students must fill out an application and sit down for an interview with Brianna Gamble, Community Youth Empowerment Chief of Staff. Gamble, a Wareham native, runs the program and started offering internships in 2020, the same year her brother, Jowaun Gamble founded the non-profit dedicated to helping young people succeed.

Brianna Gamble described the interns' bi-weekly meetings as a “conversation” where she and other organization members serve as guides rather than teachers.

“It's so much easier to not have the pressure to be an educator, instead we’re allies, we’re friends, we’re mentors, we’re leaders and we just want to help them so they can be too,” Brianna Gamble said.

Community Youth Empowerment generally has between three and five interns and until this year all of them were eligible to receive an equal share of a $5,000 scholarship upon graduating.

This year the scholarship will go to a single intern based on merit and their overall contribution to the organization.

“We are sort of putting a competitive edge onto the internship,” Brianna Gamble said.

Samuels now studies jazz and music management at the University of Hartford and said his internship experience readied him to take the next step after high school.

“It really gives you a sense of responsibility outside of high school and a sense of responsibility for the community itself,” Samuels said.

Taj Lewin-Pina, 18, interned alongside Samuels and decided to apply after helping out at some of Community Youth Empowerment’s outreach events, like the organization's annual trunk or treat.

“[The events] would have people excited with a lot of people coming and it would make people happy,” Lewin-Pina said. “So, I thought if I became an intern, being a part of the setup would just be great involvement and I’d really have fun with it”

Lewin-Pina, now a freshman at Curry College, said Jowaun Gamble was a “great mentor.”

“He’s always just a call away. It's easy to count on him and he’s just very passionate about everything, even now, I’m not in CYE he's still just a call away,” Lewin-Pina said.

Brianna Gamble said the organization emphasizes individual communication with the students.

“Once students really open themselves up and feel comfortable you learn them on a deeper level. You learn their challenges and you can relate to them because we most likely went through them ourselves,” Brianna Gamble said.

Brianna Gamble explained that while the students who intern with the organizations typically have a clear idea of their future plans, the program’s target audience are students who may be struggling to find their path.

“We are looking for the people with the big question marks,” Brianna Gamble said. “The students who don’t know and are just like ‘who here can help me?’ Because we have all those resources and we want to provide them.”

Kissamy Georges, 18, was responsible for the program's social media during her time as an intern.

“I posted the flyers on Instagram and made them appealing to a high school student, getting it to catch their eye,” Georges said.

Georges, now a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, said she also promoted the program through word of mouth, mentioning it in the cafeteria.

“We also made sure to do a lot of free food,” Georges said. “A highschoolers always going to come for free pizza”

This year the program has three interns, one from Wareham, Carver and Bourne High Schools.

“Hopefully they leave the internship with a sense of empowerment, that’s really the only word that works, empowerment,” Brianna Gamble said.