Too bright to dim: My Future So Bright program sees exponential growth during third year

By Faith Hatton, posted Aug 20, 2025 on BizFayetteville.com

A total of 84 interns participated in this year’s My Future So Bright program. At the graduation ceremony held on Aug. 1, each student was able to receive their graduation certificates from Mid-Carolina Regional Council Executive Director Samantha Wullenwaber. Photo by GFBJ.

It has been an explosive year of growth for the My Future So Bright (MFSB) summer work program.

Organized by the Mid-Carolina Regional Council, backed by NCWorks and supported by the city of Fayetteville, the work-based learning program saw a total of 84 interns across three summer cohort sessions for 2025. This is up from 24 interns that enrolled in the program last year. Organizers of the program shared that they increased their recruitment sources to include separate workforce development programs District C and Cumberland County Schools’ ICON (Innovative Career Opportunities Now) summer internship program, which led to an increase in student interest.

“Because we worked with District C, that’s where most of the kids came from. We did have some that went straight into the [MFSB] program. Those individuals already knew what they were looking to do, and for us, it was connecting them,” said Jennifer McArthur, APRA and NextGen compliance monitor for Mid-Carolina Regional Council. “Because they were already in college, they kind of knew, ‘Hey, this is what I want to home in on.’ So, it was easy to place them.”

The program also saw a 109% increase in the number of businesses that participated this year, with almost 120 signing up to take on student workers for the summer; a huge jump from the 11 businesses that signed on in 2024.

“Once we put the notice out that we were looking for businesses, we started getting a lot of emails. We peeked through them to see what would be beneficial for the student’s career pathways,” said Veronica Rozier, business services coordinator for Mid-Carolina Regional Council. “Most of them were small businesses and a lot of organizations like Veterans Bridge Home. They were the key to a lot because they cover a lot of areas within North Carolina.”

For Veterans Bridge Home, who returned for their second year taking interns for the summer, one student may not have been enough.

“Knowing what I know now, we probably could have taken on two or three more interns to be able to impact their growth but also be able to help the organization,” shared Sandhills Market President for Veterans Bridge Home Al Lampkins. “I really love mentoring the youth, that’s part of my passion. But if I took on an intern, I wanted to be able to maximize what it is they were trying to do. So initially, I was like ‘Oh, let’s try one.’”

While Veterans Bridge Home is a nonprofit organization for Veterans seeking assistance in housing, healthcare, employment or VA benefits, they were able to fill the interest of their intern. Lampkins shared that his intern, Julius Bradshaw-Mitchell, was able to use his skills and show his passion through digital storytelling.

“We always want to show people what we do; we think that it’s good for our community to hear success stories,” shared Lampkins. “Having an intern that was able to capture that, to capture the stories, to take photographs about it, to be able to write about it, which is going to connect to something that he wants to do later, I think, helped him to excel even more. And then outside of that, we also gave him an opportunity to work in an office environment, which I think will be important for his growth later on down the road.”

Lampkins shared that he is already planning to get involved with the program again next year and will gladly recommend it to other area businesses.

“I believe that this program is vital to our youth, but it’s also vital to our community too, because it gives our community energy. It helps our youth with future goals and helps them to be able to work in a professional setting,” said Lampkins. “When you think about what it does for youth that would have just been maybe just sitting around playing games, not doing a lot of things this summer, the impact that it made. I think it's important that these programs stay around, and that as business owners, that we take part in doing our part in helping.”

Organizers also shared that the most important part of the program overall is the student experiences.

Local student and MFSB intern Khadija Bibi shared that she has always had an interest in healthcare, but her internship this summer with Wolinsky Primary Care really helped her get the hands-on experience she needed to know what her future career path might entail.

“I would take vitals, help with restocking stuff and sometimes I would help with procedures like EKGs and this one time, I even did a urine sample,” shared Bibi.

“I would say it definitely exposes you to the real world. It helps you grasp what you want to do in the future. It makes you really want to be sure about what you're doing. I know it definitely helped me with that. I always knew I wanted to go into healthcare, but when I did that internship, it just made me all the more passionate about it.”

Moving forward, organizers are working on bigger partnerships to bring this program beyond Fayetteville and to the county level.

Learn more about the Mid-Carolina Regional Council and their other events and programs at www.mccog.org.

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