How we repurposed the Innovation Lab for students
At Puppet by Perforce, we pride ourselves on being both community-empowered and empowering the community. In 2019, we partnered with Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) to launch the Innovation Lab at Puppet, a space for up-and-coming entrepreneurs to gain mentorship, support diverse leadership, and share resources to strengthen Portland’s startup community. When the pandemic hit, many schools completely ceased on-site operations, including De La Salle North Catholic High School. As part of our mission, Puppet by Perforce invited De La Salle to use the Innovation Lab during the 2021–2022 school year, with Covid-19 precautions in place.
De La Salle North Catholic High School is a Portland private school for socio-economically disadvantaged students that has been long renowned for its Corporate Work Study Program (CWSP). The CWSP connects students with companies in the Portland metropolitan area to subsidize the cost of tuition and gain work experience to help build impressive resumes and foster professional networks. Connecting classroom to career, CWSP enables students to earn up to 50% of their own tuition costs.
Pre-pandemic, De La Salle would place high school students in a rotation team that reports on-site multiple days a week at any one of its 80+ corporate partners, including Nike, Deloitte, Momentive, and Puppet by Perforce. Many of De La Salle’s partners wanted to continue participating in the CWSP, but could not allow students on site at their offices due to company Covid-19 policies. As a result, the program lost 50% of its partnerships.
Fortunately, Puppet was able to offer its Innovation Lab space as a satellite office to many of the Corporate Work Study Program students. A survey from the Afterschool Alliance found an all-time high of 24.6 million children were unable to access an afterschool program at the end of 2021. For many of the students at De La Salle, the technology needed to complete their Corporate Work Study tasks wasn’t readily available at home. The Innovation Lab at Puppet offered a safe and productive space for students to be together in a professional environment outside of their school facilities, and provided the technology needed for students to fulfill their job requirements.
Between October and May, as many as 45 sophomores, juniors, and seniors worked at the Innovation Lab weekly for 10 employers, including Bora Architecture, Open Sesame, First Tech Federal Credit, Survey Monkey, and The Standard — as well as Puppet by Perforce, of course! Adult oversight of the Innovation Lab was provided by De La Salle staff members.
”Work environments have been radically altered in the past couple years,” shared Ashleigh de Villiers, Interim President of De La Salle. “Puppet by Perforce’s generosity with its Innovation Lab was an incredible gift to our program last year, as it enabled our students to go to work in a whole new way — a virtual way that is here to stay. De La Salle’s Corporate Work Study Program needs to be adaptable, and Puppet’s partnership really was key in making that happen during the 2021–22 school year.”
Congratulations to this year’s graduates!
Puppet by Perforce has been honored to be a part of these students’ journey. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the school’s namesake, created his classroom for students who couldn’t afford an education. With a 98–100% graduation rate, the students of De La Salle North continue to flourish and uphold this legacy 300 years later.
