Jesus Martinez, 23, aides truant youth at Bayview YMCA
According to a new Young Invincibles report, the youngest workers in the economy, those aged 16 to 24, share an unemployment rate well over twice the national average—at 15 percent versus an average for the full working population of 7.3 percent.
These historic numbers of unemployed young workers costs state and federal governments $25 billion annually, according to the same report.
With youth unemployment the highest since the Great Depression, and given the challenges that many TAY face in supporting themselves—finding safe, affordable housing in San Francisco—many transitional aged youth are unable to access the training and education they need to build sustainable lives.
In this article, we applaud programs like Horizons LifeWorks Employment program and the Bayview YMCA that offer meaningful, real life experiences for disconnected young people to gain skills and earn a paycheck.
Bayview YMCA Program Helps Jesus (CTAB Member), 23, Reach Out to Truant Young People
Jesus Martinez is a Peer Advocate/Life Skills Coach in the CARE Program at the Bayview Hunters Point YMCA. There, he helps truant youth re-engage back to school and employment services, such as job search and training programs, building resumes, cover letters, and master applications.
Jesus works well with all the young people, because he “walks-the-walk” and shares a similar personal experience of the young people he works with, making him trustworthy.
“They look up to me,” said Jesus. “If I did it, they can do it as well. If a youth has a bad day, I take a walk with them outside and talk it out.”
The majority of the youth that Jesus serves are African-American, Hispanic, or Samoan. The young people Jesus works with want to find a job, and are tired of not being financially stable or making money elsewhere.
Jesus also provides mock job interviews, explains how to dress professionally, even giving the young people ties, belts provided by his supervisor’s resources.
Bayview YMCA has a few programs to help truant youth reach self-sufficient adulthood. The Bayview YMCA offers the CARE program to reengage truant 15-17 year-olds, 5 Keys Charter School for the population between the ages of 17-19, and the Transitional Age Youth Services for youth between the ages of 16-24.
The TAY services help to link students up with General Assistance, housing, job opportunities, and college transfers. The (TILL) Transitional Independent Living Life Skills group is a business etiquette course. The TILL group offers preparation for communication, financial literacy, emotional intelligence, educational/employment expectations, critical thinking, time management and prioritization of goals.
Bayview YMCA has connections with outside organizations to refer young people looking for work and experience. Recently, the YMCA has referred their young adults to UPS, and has seen their youth obtain jobs. Bayview YMCA CARE Program partners with anyone who takes youth, including MYEEP, and CHALK.
“We don’t send any youth unprepared,” says Jesus. This is why YMCA Bayview helps them gain resume-boosting skills and experience, sometimes even just volunteering.
One outside organization the TAY services in the Bayview YMCA works with is Year Up Bay Area, who has been looking specifically for young people from the Bayview. This March, Bayview YMCA will send recent 5 Keys graduates to start at Year Up.
“That is why now it is even more important for Bayview YMCA to focus helping youth to get into the right mindset to complete a long term intensive program like Year Up,” said Jesus.
Jesus was a truant youth himself. He bounced around 7 different high schools in San Francisco, living in foster care group homes, in juvenile detention facilities, hanging out on the streets before dropping out all together. That was before Jesus became one of the first to graduate CARE program in 2008.
Thankfully for Jesus, Eason Ramson, the ex-49er and director of Bayview YMCA’s CARE program, reached out to him, and brought him into YMCA.
“I did not have many male role models,” says Jesus, and Ramson was the first to go over the bigger picture and long-term goals with him. When Jesus stopped coming to the CARE Program YMCA, Ramson repeatedly left voice mails, and even showed up at Jesus house one morning to tell him that all he wanted was for Jesus to graduate.
At the YMCA, Jesus’s now supervisor Demetrius Durham showed him how to write resumes, dress properly in the workplace, improve his typing skills, and to think critically.
Jesus’s other mentor at the YMCA, Sean Tanner, taught him how to work with other youth who had struggled as Jesus had. Sean told Jesus to be himself, and how important it was for young people to see and hear from someone who had been through what they were going through.
Soon, Jesus transferred to Early Morning Study Academy where he earned his GED. Now as an adult working towards an Associate’s Degree in Sociology from CCSF, Jesus gets along and has built relationships with people from all over San Francisco.
Along with working at the YMCA part-time, Jesus plans to transfer to San Francisco State University. Beyond university, Jesus plans to be a Youth Probation Officer.
“If I was brave enough to risk my life before, then I can be bold enough to be a leader,” says Jesus. Following the instruction at Bayview YMCA, Jesus still learns at least three new things a day.
LifeWorks Employment & Entrepreneurship Program at Horizons Offers a Leg-up to Young People with the Most Difficulty Finding Work
The youngest of nine children, Celina Lucero grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District, and all of her family benefited from services at Horizons. “We bump into a lot of people, and you say “Horizons,” and people know it,” said Celina.
Celina started as a youth in Horizons employment program over twenty years ago. After she aged out after four years in the program, Celina started working at Horizons in the employment program, which was the predecessor of MYEEP, becoming a team leader, then actual MYEEP coordinator, and then from there a manager.
Celina also took on prevention programs, and has been at Horizons as an adult employee role going on twelve years.
“I think youth work, I was born to do,” said Celina. “It keeps me young. I really feel that I serve a purpose. I have a connection with youth in the community and from other neighborhoods.”
Horizons offers several youth employment programs. One is part of MYEEP, a city wide, neighborhood-based employment program which serves only 9th and 10th graders during the school year and 11th and entering 12th graders during the summer.
Horizons other employment program is LifeWorks, which serves 14-21 year-olds involved in the Juvenile Justice system. LifeWorks provides job-readiness, life skills, career exploration, academic support, post-secondary education planning and preparation, and places youth at work sites in San Francisco.
Youth at LifeWorks are all San Francisco residents, but from all over. “I would say in the past, the majority were Mission district,” said Celina. But now youth come to LifeWorks office in the Mission from all over. “It depends on what neighborhoods they feel safe to come into,” said Celina.
Youth have to be actively on probation or recently off probation within the past three months to participate in LifeWorks. Probation Officers, case managers, teachers/counselors, in house programs, or other CBO staff–as well as from current and former participant–refer young people to LifeWorks.
Once referred to LifeWorks, youth go through an assessment at Juvenile or Adult Probation that looks at needs, skills, barriers, and interests.
“We are being more intentional in reaching out to the local private sector to serve as work sites,” said Celina, “and have been successful.” For example, LifeWorks partnered with Artillery gallery, a local clothing design and art shop, and partnered with 31 RAX, a retail location.
According to Celina, some sites can work with youth without previous work experience–like the Boys and Girls Club in the Mission, Columbia Park–and can provide really strong youth development support, as opposed to other sites that want older youth and have more advanced positions.
LifeWorks also has a leadership component, including an assistant position in-house known as a CIT, Coordinator in Training. The CIT position is slated for LifeWorks youth who have demonstrated they want to develop leadership skills and have proven that they possess the necessary drive, maturity, and skills needed to support the program on a higher level.
One of the favorite youth employment components at Horizons is their “DJ Project” which helps train youth interested in audio production, DJing, event production, artist relations, business and project management, budget/grant writing.
The DJ Project overall is made up of three components, Audio Production, DJing, and the Event Production crew. In class, youth can come in to record and produce their own music, learn different techniques around Dj-ing, and as they develop, provide entertainment for community groups.
LifeWorks can serve youth 12-26 year-olds in both classes (Audio Production and DJing) and offer stipends in some cases to youth who are not enrolled in LifeWorks or MYEEP, but want to participate. The programs run on two cycles, school-year cycle, January-September, mid-August.
“A lot of times, youth come through different programs, stay at DJ Project for at least a year,” said Celina, “then find about LifeWorks and other programs and in some cases remain at our agency for several years in different capacities.”
LifeWorks also had a social media intern, taking photos, doing outreach, updating our Facebook and other pages such as bandcamp, etc.
Though work experience and leadership opportunities are crucial for system-involved and otherwise disconnected transitional age youth, LifeWorks helps build an educational foundation for their young people to reach independent adulthood.
In the past, LifeWorks hired a tutor to focus on multi-subject tutoring, homework assistance, Cyber high, GED and credit recovery. This year LifeWorks successfully expanded the role of this position, to 25 hours a week Academic Research Specialist.
The Specialist still provides tutoring, but also provides educational and post-secondary planning, academic planning and assessment, runs workshops on financial aid/college access, A-G requirements, going through the pro/cons of starting at junior college as opposed to four-year college or university, doing one-on-one check-ins, meeting with guidance counselors, reviewing grades, etc.
If the young LifeWorks participants don’t bring grades up, they are assigned to tutoring twice a week and still attend weekly workshops. “Any youth who falls below 2.0 grade point average or is failing any class,” said Celina, “tutoring becomes mandatory, at least once a week.” If improvements are made, they are dropped from work experience and focus specifically on tutoring, until the grading period ends.
To complement education and employment opportunities for young people, Horizons also focuses on global, environmental prevention methods to keep young people healthy.
They are one of several prevention providers using evidence-based model, CMCA (Communities Mobilizing For Change on Alcohol) and are currently looking at alcohol advertisements that target youth in the community, since they bombard young people on all sides.
“Last year, we successfully focused on data collection, and our youth collected data of stores around 24th Street, Mission, Potrero,” said Celina.
The young people checked through several different laws on how much alcohol advertising stores have on their storefronts, on billboards, and in the interior of their stores, and then found what stores were not compliant with the legal amount.
Now Horizons is working on campaigns to build partnerships to reduce the amount of alcohol in community stores.
“After they analyzed the data, this year they will focus on building partnerships,” said Celina, who will work with Jonathan Purvis at the Planning Department, to go back to stores to see if they would be interested in reducing the amount of alcohol advertising.
Horizons also provides gender-specific programming: Females Against Violence (FAV), a young women’s program that teaches participants about dating and domestic violence, the cycles of violence, and supports them in finding their voice.
They also have Jovenes Education and Empowerment Program, modeled after FAV that works with young men around issues of violence, and helps them to unlearn norms and behaviors, and build strong, respectful young male leaders using the Joven Noble evidence based model.
At Horizons, the bulk of funding comes from Department of Public Health and the Department of Children, Youth & Their Families (DCYF), which funds their employment programs.