JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Dozens of new students turned their lives around by joining the Jacksonville Job Corps on Thursday during National Signing Day on Jacksonville’s northside.
Dozens of young people are now entering a new chapter in their lives and are preparing for their future.
The program signed up 30 new students for Job Corps. The training program serves as an option for young people ages 16 to 24 who want to take the next steps in their education and careers.
“Signing Day is a big day for us,” Paul Wycoff, Center Director with the Jacksonville Job Corps Center, said. “This is for new students coming in, showing a recommitment, showing this is what they’re doing. They’re coming to the Job Corp center saying I want a change. I want a change in my life. I want to start with something new in my life.”
Nearly 300 students and staff packed the gym on campus to show support for the new crop of students.
“I had the skills and the mindset to do better,” Marquita Tyson, a single mother who joined Job Corps to give her son a better life, told News4JAX.
“It was just me hanging around different people that I shouldn’t have,” Marquita Tyson said. “Ended up in bad situations. Now that I came to Job Corps, I get to hang around career-minded people.”
Tyson’s now one of the program’s leaders as president of the Student Government Association and already has the skills to be an electrician.
“You do get a lot of growth, you do get a lot of everything here that you don’t get in the world, in a community that’s terrible.”
New student Gabrielle Carter was previously in the Air Force and now wants to be a computer technician like his older brothers.
“I feel great about recommitting myself to being here, to learning, to my own future, my own ambitions, my own goals,” Carter said.
NFL Pro Bowl Hall of Famer Darell Green was also on hand to encourage new, current, and former students of the program.
“We applaud them because it’s a decision to be made,” Green said. “It’s a decision. It’s a right thinking. It’s having a vision. It’s not being afraid to take that first step.”
Students say they’re ready to take on the next steps in their futures.
“It feels good to tell myself once again that I’m here, I’m ready I want to be here, and after it is all said and done, I will be a better person for it,” Carter said.
During the ceremony, three graduates were also inducted into the newly established Jacksonville Job Corps Hall of Fame.