Aldebol asks about Public Service Corps expansion
Aldebol notes PSC grew from 106 to 122 interns and 7 to 13 agencies; Otar explains they unified teams and did targeted outreach and expos.
With the Public Service Corps program, in FY 2025, 106 PSC interns were placed across seven agencies.
In FY 2026, 122 PSC interns.
Trending in the right direction.
Interns were placed across 13 agencies.
What work did DCAS undertake to expand the number of agencies that host interns and to increase the total number of interns?
Yes, and that's the part of the...
You do to amplify that even more.
Yes, that's a part of the exciting work that we do.
So separately, we had within DCAS the Public Service Corps program, internships and fellowship teams, and the recruitment teams were separate under separate units.
And so we brought them under the same umbrella, so that way we can be more strategic in the outreach that we're doing.
We can amplify those programs a little bit more.
Within the Public Service Corps, we really take a look at what our activities were, like our standard operating procedures, and figure out what areas we can improve in.
And then we also did targeted outreach to agencies, to schools.
We had information sessions.
Our team go out to work with the federal work-study individuals at respective schools.
And so we did a lot of the boots-on-the-ground activity to make sure that we were able to bring individuals on.
We also held our public service corps.
Expo.
So twice a year, we gather agencies that are interested in hiring interns, and we bring them in, and they can interview and hire on the spot.
And we saw that that resulted in a lot of interns being hired to grow the program.
Do you have plans to expand that?
Oh, absolutely.
We are celebrating 60 years next month.
And so we are also looking at how we're amplifying how we reach public service core individuals that are qualified for the program and expanding how agencies participate.
So that is one of our main goals that we're working towards this year.
I want to recognize that we've been joined by Council Member Narcisse.
I'm going to ask one more question, then I'll turn it over to my colleague to see if she has any questions.