HAGERSTOWN — Jessica “Jessi” Foster had no plans a year ago when she “just stopped trying” and dropped out of North Hagerstown High School.

Then, she got pregnant — and suddenly, “I had to grow up really fast,” said Foster, 18.

And she has.

While caring for her new son, Aydan, Foster has earned a general equivalency diploma, she has a job and this fall, she will be going to Hagerstown Community College.

She owes much of this, she figures, to the staff at the Western Maryland Consortium and to a special program, funded with federal economic stimulus money it launched this summer to help youths from low-income families.

“I don’t know how to put it,” Foster said when asked her feelings about the Hagerstown-based work-force development agency. “Like, if it wasn’t for me contacting them in the first place, I think I’d really be in big trouble with, like, no education, a new baby, no job. They help me a whole lot.”

The story of each of the youths helped by the consortium is different, but the theme running through them is the same.

“The majority of the kids have been very great success stories, from high school to higher education,” said Deb Gilbert, case manager for youths at the consortium. “The best way to describe it is gratifying. It just makes you feel good all over. These youths, you watch them grow and turn into young adults.

“Good part, it only takes one to make it all worthwhile. And we have many, many this year.”

Getting an opportunity

Derrick Green graduated from North High this year, but it wasn’t until he got a job this summer that he knew for certain what he would like to do for the rest of his life.

The job, which he got through the consortium, has him working around the animals at the Humane Society of Washington County while cleaning kennels, doing laundry and other “get down dirty” tasks, he said with a gentle laugh.

“I’d love to try to get on here (full time) because it’s something I would enjoy,” said Green, 18. “Lots of people wake up in the morning, hate going to their job. But I don’t.”

Green said he’s grateful to the consortium and its staff for pushing to hire so many youths, including him, this summer.

“It gets people opportunities — people that can’t get a job right away” because of the economy.

In a year or so, Green said, he would like to enroll at HCC and, eventually, earn a degree in zoology so he can work in a zoo.

The interest, enriched by this summer’s job, seems to come naturally. His first pet “a long time ago” was a turtle named Shelby, and he already had four dogs, a cat and two kittens before coming to work at the shelter.

His love of animals is evident, co-workers said. That and the responsibilities he takes on are admirable, they said.

“He’s great. He does everything I ask him,” said Tracey Peter, animal care supervisor. “He steps up. I don’t have to always tell him what he needs to do. He picks it up fairly well.”

Is it hard when you get attached to an animal and then it must be euthanized?

“Sometimes, sometimes, you could say that you’re helping them,” Green said. “I wouldn’t want to be sick for life.”

Looking ahead to college

Tinisha Tennant struggled with reading until the eighth grade, when a teacher at E. Russell Hicks Middle School made a big difference.

So it was quite a moment this past year when Tennant, as a high school student, was helping to teach reading at an elementary school — and that same teacher stopped by.

Now Tennant, who is 18 and graduated from North High this year, has her mind set on another big achievement — she is going to HCC this fall and then on to a four-year college to graduate with a degree in education.

If so, she will be the first in her family to go so far.

“It feels really good,” she said. “Hopefully, my brothers and sister will follow behind.”

A lot of the credit for the path she’s taking goes to the consortium, Tennant said.

This summer was her fourth working at community organizations through programs set up by the consortium.

The first summer, she said, she worked at Girls Inc., helping young girls learn.

“A lot of them had issues going on,” she said. “I was about their age, so I could relate.”

The past three summers, she has worked with children participating in programs at Memorial Recreation Center in Hagerstown.

Tennant “saw the need” and, this summer, helped create a special reading program there, said Loretta Wright, the center’s new executive director.

“I have loved it there,” Tennant said.

Her siblings — one sister and three brothers — are important to her. “Big responsibility,” she said, explaining the oldest is a sophomore at North and the others are in middle school.

This summer, Tennant is working longer than usual at the recreation center because she’s among the students the consortium is helping to get to college.

She’s been told she can continue working through Sept. 30, when the consortium’s extended summer jobs program closes, but her college classes are to begin Aug. 31.

As usual, she said, her caseworker at the consortium was a step ahead when asked about that.

“I could do a slowdown in work hours,” Tennant said she was advised. “‘School comes first’ is what the lady told me.”

The consortium, she said, has “been a big help. Very big. With the money I have received from the consortium, I’ve bought school supplies. Maybe once or twice, I go get some clothes. But most of it is in the bank in case of emergency.

“It’s taught me a lot how to be independent, responsible. It’s taught me a lot.”

Her mother, Annette Moore, agreed.

“Aw, the consortium program is great,” she said.

Moore also gives a lot of credit to her daughter.

“I’m very proud of her,” said Moore, who went to nursing school for two years. “She graduated. She worked four years through the consortium. ... She’s the first in the family to accomplish what she’s going to do at college.”

Making strides

Travis Oyler has been making strides toward his future for years.

Now 18, he was 13 or 14 when he first signed up with the consortium, landing jobs two summers at Winter Street Elementary School in Hagerstown’s West End.

“They even paid for me to go to electric classes through ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) on Locust Street,” Oyler said. “I went there and got my ‘Electrical One’ — I can work as an apprentice. That’s my backup (career) right now.”

About two months ago, after graduating from Washington County Technical High School, Oyler signed up to join the U.S. Army.

“I wanted to make a good career for myself,” he said. “My uncle does it. And my brother, he’s doing a good job at it. I’m sure I can do it, too.

“They’ll pay for $100,000 worth of college. I want to use that,” he said. “I want to try the Army first. I want to retire when I’m 39” and begin a second career.

For the past 10 years, Oyler said, he has lived with his grandparents in the West End.

His grandmother works in housekeeping at Washington County Hospital and his grandfather, who died a year ago, had worked for a local contractor, he said.

“I never met my real father, so that was my father figure,” he said of his grandfather.

Money wasn’t plentiful, “so none of my aunts or uncles ever went to college, or my grandparents or my mother,” Oyler said.

This summer, the job he got through the consortium brought forth yet another ambition.

Oyler was hired to work as an aide at The Learning Center, a child care facility at 535 Summit Ave. that is part of Washington County Health System.

During the summer, “we go on a field trip every day,” Oyler said, proudly fingering the yarn bracelets and necklaces the children made for him.

“I love to play basketball with the kids, and kickball,” he said. “I just love doing everything with them. I’m so glad I took this job.”

And that is why the second career Oyler is planning after he retires from the Army someday has changed.

“I did want to be a homicide detective, but after working here this summer, I kind of want to be a PE teacher,” he said. “I never worked with kids before, but now that I have, I want to be all about it.”

Oyler seems to have so much going for him, but there is at least one complication.

“I have a kid on the way,” he said. He said he intends to support the child, and to visit, but has no marriage plans.

It is tough to know what to do and he is uncertain, especially because the Army likely will station him far away, he said.

“I think it’s unfair to the kid,” he said.

But given the better jobs and income Oyler is likely to secure through the military, “I think it’d be better for him in the long run.”

Setting the bar higher

Julie Barr-Strasburg, executive director of the Hagerstown chapter of the American Red Cross, said she feels fortunate that Jessi Foster came to work for her this summer through the consortium program.

“We really needed her help because of cutbacks financially,” Barr-Strasburg said. And, she said, Foster has been enthusiastic in working at the chapter as a receptionist.

“She was willing to help wherever we asked her,” she said. “And I thought for a young lady coming into a workplace like that, I think she’s done incredibly well. I’ve only received high compliments from our staff about her.”

Foster is just as complimentary about the staff at the consortium. She singled out caseworker Deb Gilbert as well as Carol Lourie, hired especially to handle this summer’s surge in youth workers.

“After I got my GED, they told me there were a few other options — I could start school, I could get a job and they could help me get my driver’s license, too,” Foster said. “They’re helping me a whole lot. They’re helping me get everything together. Deb, actually, is doing a lot of the contacting for me” to go to HCC for the fall semester.

Foster plans to study nursing.

“I am interested in psychology,” she said. “I want to be a psychiatric nurse, behavioral stuff. Psychology fascinates me.”

In reaching for all this, she is setting the bar higher for herself — and in her family.

She said she will be the first in her family to go to college.

But maybe not the last.

“I am the oldest of my siblings,” she said. “I have two sisters and a brother.”

Striving to help

Deb Gilbert cares, and it shows.

Ask her about any of the youths and, without looking at notes, she can tell you about them and what the consortium has been doing to try to help each.

“All four — great kids,” she said of Foster, Tennant, Oyler and Green.

“The youth come in,” she said. “Might need GED or need to go to college. Or need a work experience. And I sit down with them, do the intake. We talk about what we need to do to get there. Then, we work problem by problem to get to where we need to be.”

If there’s a problem in school, Gilbert said, the consortium can work with the school system’s intervention specialist to encourage a student to improve.

“Might be she’s at risk of dropping out, might be an absentee problem, or failing grades,” Gilbert said.

That’s when “special incentives” might be used, she said.

“We might pay for your senior pictures or driver’s ed — incentives that they need during the school year,” she said.

After working at the consortium 16 years, the last eight as a caseworker, Gilbert seems to know the job well.

But there is another reason she takes each youth’s case so personally.

“I was in the program myself many years ago,” she said.

Gilbert was 24 and a single mother when she participated in the Project Independence program run by the consortium’s predecessor, The Training Place, she said.

“They sent me through training,” she said. “I did bookkeeping and administrative assistance.”