What does it mean for a program to transform communities while remaining grounded in the voices and perspectives of residents? In the second episode of J-PAL Voices: The Impact and Promise of Summer Jobs in the United States, we look at how summer jobs programs in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City strive to ensure that zip code is not destiny.
What does it mean for a program to transform communities while remaining grounded in the voices and perspectives of residents? In the second episode of J-PAL Voices: The Impact and Promise of Summer Jobs in the United States, we look at how summer jobs programs in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City strive to ensure that zip code is not destiny. These programs celebrate diversity and introduce participants to a variety of perspectives. Hear how yesterday’s participants become today’s leaders through the stories of Rashad Cope and Tatiana Arguello. Learn about the value of building deep relationships from the Philadelphia Youth Network’s Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend. And hear from participants like Benjamin Babayev and Sunny Lee on how their summer experiences broadened their horizons.
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Links:
·How do Summer Youth Employment Programs Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes, and for Whom? (pdf) by Alicia Sasser-Modestino
·PBS News Hour video (webpage) on Chicago’s One Summer Chicago program going virtual
·Snapshots: 20 Years of Impact (webpage) publication with participant stories from the Philadelphia Youth Network
·WBUR story (webpage) on Boston’s summer youth employment program adjusting this summer
·United Activities Unlimited’s Summer Youth Employment Program page (webpage)
Rashad Cope
I was born and raised here in the Roxbury part of Boston. I currently serve as the Director of the Department of Youth Engagement and Employment with the City of Boston. And in this role, I am responsible for providing leadership and oversight in our department's work around youth employment, where we provide nearly 4,000 jobs to youth and young adults across Boston.
Narrator
In his capacity at the City of Boston, Rashad Cope spends a lot of his time thinking about how to best serve the youth in his community, from engaging them in civic opportunities to connecting them with services and resources. For Rashad, this mission is both personal and professional
Rashad Cope (~1:16 of Zoom recording)
I would say that I came into this role really just as a proud native of the city of Boston and an indebted product of the Shelburne Community Center, which is a local community center in the neighborhood in the heart of Roxbury here in Boston, and a proud product of Boston public schools. My professional passion has always required alignment and giving back what was given to me in a more effective and measurable way, especially within the community and neighborhoods in which I was raised.
Narrator
Rashad has a deep understanding of the communities he serves, one borne of familiarity. Moreover, he has first-hand knowledge of the role that summer jobs programs can play in these very communities.
Rashad Cope
Very interestingly, my first job was actually through the department which I am currently the director of. So, back then it was called Boston Youth Fund and I worked at the Shelburne Community Center, which was my safe haven and my community and it was my home away from home. But my first job was a camp counselor at that community center and yes, I was employed through the city's youth employment program. So, everything has come full circle, which is pretty amazing.
Narrator
From J-PAL North America, this is J-PAL Voices. I’m your host, Rohit Naimpally. On this season of J-PAL Voices, we take a close look at the impact and promise presented by summer jobs programs in the United States. We will bring you the stories behind the impact, as told by the people who create, participate in, and sustain these programs. Episode Two: Ensure Zip Code is Not Destiny.
Narrator
Rashad’s pride in the communities that shaped him is evident. In discussing mobility from poverty and enacting systemic change, he recognizes how important it is to not only anchor solutions within these communities, but to seek out their inputs as well.
Rashad Cope
We give young people an opportunity to be heard, and jobs create that avenue for young people to build relationships with healthy adults and healthy peers, so that their issues, you know, and their concerns and their ideas can be heard. So, you give young people that voice.
Narrator
The importance of listening to the people involved in these summer jobs programs – whether participants or service providers – was especially underscored this summer. The COVID-19 pandemic threatened the viability of these programs in cities around the country. In New York City, the Department of Youth and Community Development initially canceled the 2020 Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP. But, as the Department’s Director Julia Breitman told me, they listened to the city’s youth and eventually figured out a way to ensure that this would not be a lost summer.
Julia Breitman
There really was a chorus of advocacy from young people themselves, for which we were incredibly grateful, and from the community-based organizations that are serving these communities, that said, “No, you can't do that. Young people need something for the summer. It would really be a lost opportunity. We can't have a summer without SYEP. There has never been a summer in New York City without SYEP. And young people are already falling behind and becoming disengaged from all the virtual learning, which works for some, but not for all, obviously.” And we wanted them to have something engaging to do this summer, but also not to lose this summer.
Narrator
Beyond advocating for the retention of these programs, youth have also helped reimagine summer jobs and expand the scope of what is possible. Even as Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services adapted its One Summer Chicago program to be COVID-safe, they incorporated new elements that reflected what they were hearing from Chicago’s youth.
Angela Rudolph
It was like a new endeavor because we had heard from young people that they wanted to feel like they were doing something useful at a time that they felt like they were a little bit rudderless.
Angela Rudolph
We decided to launch a new program within One Summer Chicago, the Chicago Youth Service Corps that was targeted to a subgroup of One Summer participants, around 2000 kids. And it was focused around paying them to participate in work that was either community service, social justice, or COVID related. And so, in that way, what young people were doing, is like we had some young people who were making masks for their community. We had other kids who were doing work that was focused around putting together public outreach campaigns targeted to young people in the city, both around violence reduction, violence prevention, but also around COVID. Wear your mask. You know, putting out TikTok and Instagram videos, helping people to recognize what they should be doing in order to stay safe. And then we also had some young people who were working on and looking at issues around social justice and racial equity.
Narrator
Tatiana Arguello, the Director of Workforce Development at United Activities Unlimited sees a similar opportunity for summer jobs to serve as a vehicle for civic engagement. United Activities Unlimited, or UAU, operates a summer youth employment program in the New York City borough of Staten Island.
Tatiana Arguello
You don't want the same program that never grows. You want a program that grows and is responsive to your community and is responsive to what the participants see as important and what they see as opportunities for growth, for discussion, for just engagement, you know? And so, we really have over the last few years, made it a point to put more civics in our programming and it's not to be political. It's to make sure that we are aware of who we are and what our values are, because that's an important workforce skill in itself. And also to understand how we as citizens can really be the change that we're looking for, whether that's in our workplace or in our everyday lives. So, I don't think that you need to build out different spaces. I think that the workforce is really, especially for millennials and for younger generations, about doing what it is that you love, about giving back to your community. And so, we really have made our program over the years more dynamic and responsive to the community needs and to really growing up responsibly and what that means.
Narrator
In saying that zip code should not be destiny, the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty calls for transforming communities while remaining grounded in the voices and perspectives of residents. This means giving youth the opportunity to serve the communities that raise them and that they are invested in. I see this exemplified in the positive feedback cycle that led to the Chicago Youth Service Corps and in the evolution of United Activities Unlimited. Back in 2011, my colleague Yiping Li was a 13-year old spending time at the public library in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.
Yiping Li
I very much approached this with the mindset that, I already spent my time at the Chicago Public Library. What's another way, another activity that I can engage in when I'm spending my time there during the summer, that's meaningful? And if I could contribute to my local community, that's a bonus always.
Narrator
Yiping’s role initially involved taking in and shelving books.
Yiping Li
And then it essentially grew to much more than that because it was in a neighborhood where there was a low-income population and there wasn't a lot of childcare options available. I don't want to say for everyone, but I think childcare is always something that parents struggle with in the summer when school's out. And so, the librarian pulled me aside one day and said, "We realize that parents are going to leave their kids with you. And that's just how things are. And we're not going to ask them to, "No, you can't leave your kids with us and go work at your job or run your errands."" So later when I started I would still do the intake where I would help kids fill out their book reports but because kids were staying in that space for hours at a time, we started setting up arts and crafts stations. So like board games, water color, finger painting, crayons, coloring books and all of that. Just a lot of different activities, just try to keep them engaged.
Yiping Li
It was great to be engaging these kids, not just in a regular sort of, "Hello, now we have to spend the next three to four hours together. Let's think about what we're going to do." But we have a starting point, where we're here to think about reading and how to make reading fun for these kids. And that was an easy way for me to approach these kids and ask them about, "What was the book that you read? Can you tell me about it?" And knowing maybe sometimes for these kids, they don't have a lot of time with their parents talking about these things because their parents are busy and that's certainly how sometimes my family was because both of my parents were working at the time. And it was just a neighborhood where there was a lot of families where both parents are working and not spending a lot of time at home with their kids. And maybe do not necessarily have the time to really talk through what they did in their day and also what books or what new things they were learning. So, I think I really appreciated the opportunity that I could do that. And it was fun for me too because I get to talk about books that I've read with kids and it was a symbiotic relationship, I would say.
Narrator
That idea of symbiosis – mutual benefit – is present in these programs along many dimensions. Even as the youth in these programs reap demonstrable benefits, they give back to the organizations where they work. In cases like Rashad’s or Tatiana’s, their experiences set them up to give back and serve the very programs that they benefited from. Moreover, data collected by city agencies indicate that the vast majority of employers, including those in the private sector, benefit from their participation in the program.
Julia Breitman
When we survey our employers, they return 90+% evaluations. They're all willing to return, they're all willing to rehire their young people. So, we know it works, but we do need more companies to say yes to hiring our young people
Narrator
As Julia at the Department of Youth and Community Development sees it, the more that employers in New York City get involved with the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, the better it will be not only for the City and its youth, but for the companies themselves.
Julia Breitman
We have some of the glitziest names in the world who make their homes in New York City, but I don't know how much New York City they actually know. Where do they recruit their interns? They're coming from all over the world, but they may not necessarily be coming from the Bronx, or from Brooklyn, or from Queens. And so, my goal is to sort of make it a universal program where you want to do business in New York City, you have to hire New York City youth. And I think it would be a tremendous boon for all industries, not just for the young people, but for the industries themselves because it will really make them understand New York much more, the communities that they're working with much more, and really make them feel like New York City companies.
Narrator
These companies naturally strengthen summer jobs programs as they feel a deeper investment in the communities that these programs draw on. Building trust in relationships takes time, but the payoff is evident when everyone feels a stake in ensuring that these programs are successful. The Philadelphia Youth Network, or PYN, is currently partnering with economist Sara Heller to evaluate the impact of Philadelphia’s WorkReady summer jobs program. The relationships that PYN cultivated with private companies and non-profit agencies, proved especially valuable when the pandemic threw WorkReady in flux this year.
Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend
We got hard at work and in three weeks we came up with a whole new strategy to implement and introduce virtual experiences. Now we could not have done that without the support of so many local champions. I have to say so many of our employers – PECO, Comcast – so many of our partners said, “Hey, if you can figure something out, we want to help. Tell us how we can help.” So, you can't do this without a trusting relationship with so many entities.
Narrator
That’s Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network. Organizations like PYN typically plan for a year’s summer jobs program many months in advance, which makes their last-minute pivot to modifying this summer’s WorkReady experience all the more laudable.
Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend
Now, some things that we had in our favor. We have great relationships with our nonprofit partners. So, we were able to quickly assess their ability to move forward with us. What will they need? What kind of training? What would be helpful for them? Very, very quickly. And I'm proud that we started out with 82 organizations; 98% of them, so 80 of them went along this journey with us. And that is a huge amount of both trust and respect. And I just remember being so humbled. I wasn't sure exactly how this was going to work out. I was very honest with them. I don't know how this is going to work, this is what we want to try. I believe nothing beats a failure but a try. So, if we are willing to try together, let's make this happen. And they were like, “Yes, we want to try too, we too want to be a part of giving young people an experience or an opportunity.”
Narrator
Even while acknowledging that a virtual experience is different from an in-person one, Chekemma has been blown away by what she saw from participants and employers this past summer.
Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend
And I think what arrested me, or what surprised me, the most was that every time I went to a virtual event with one of my providers, it was full. I mean, 57 faces tuned in, chats blowing up asking great questions. And what I saw was young people being engaged. It was a very different medium in which we delivered the WorkReady services. We have been doing this for a long time and we've never done it the way we did it this past year. And to know that the benefits were still transmitted. Not just in earning resources, but building the relationships, sharpening the skills, being engaged in community, having an impact on the world around you, discussing very important and real relevant topics. But all doing that while you are sharpening what I will say is, you know, essential skills for any work environment: the critical thinking, the communication, the team work, the initiative. Being responsible and reliable. Those are assets that every employer wants in every single employee. And that's what I saw this summer.
Narrator
Communication skills, learning how to be responsible and reliable, being engaged in community; PYN has tried to ensure that virtual versions of summer jobs programs focus on what’s most important. Those elements stand out in the stories that we hear from participants as well. Alicia Sasser-Modestino is an economist at Northeastern University who has evaluated Boston’s Summer Jobs Program. As part of her research, she has conducted focus groups with participants in the program. She shared the story of a participant who had worked as a day camp counselor.
Alicia Sasser-Modestino
He was out sick one day. And he got a text from one of his campers saying, “Are you okay? Where are you? I'm looking for you and I'm worried, are you going to come back to work tomorrow?” And he realized in that moment, how impactful he was on the campers that he was supervising and how important it was that he show up to work every day. And that there were kids who were counting on him. So, I think when we think about the social skills that are developed, in terms of not just interacting with your peers, but developing empathy, your responsibility to others that you're working with or you're working for, or you're supervising. These are real experiences that youth are having. And employment and work provides these experiences in a way that you don't necessarily get in school and that you don't get in other areas of your life. And so, I think that's another thing that maybe has just been overlooked over time is, you know, if we think back to our own first jobs that we had and the things that we learned, and the mistakes that we made. They were very transformational kinds of experiences. Like, I remember the first job that I did and, I didn't show up for work and I got fired! I got fired from my first job and that never happened again, I'll tell you that! So, I think that the work experience is a universal experience. But for some youth who either don't have that opportunity because, where they live there aren't too many job opportunities, or their parents don't have those connections. Or, for youth who have not had these types of experiences, it really can put them on a different path.
Narrator
These experiences partly shape youth by helping them imagine opportunities they may not be aware of. Sara Heller, an economist at the University of Michigan whom we met in Episode One, hears stories similar to Alicia’s when she speaks with youth in Chicago.
Sara Heller
Some of the most compelling moments that I had working on these studies were doing site visits and sort of talking to the youth about their experiences. And, you know, they sort of articulate the same mechanisms we're thinking about too, right? So, I had one youth talk to me about how his mentor in the program really helped him envision a future that he didn't really think that he had a future before the program, but now he was sort of starting to see what that might look like.
Narrator
Helping youth see that future and see themselves in that future is a central goal of City agencies like DYCD in New York.
Julia Breitman
What we do with our programs, it's not just create opportunities, but it's also create opportunities for career exploration. So sure, as a 16-year-old you're not going to have the opportunity to work in some of these giant corporations, but you can find out what happens inside them. You can meet a mentor who works there, you can attend a career panel and hear how that person got to where they were. And maybe they look just like you, and maybe they grew up in a neighborhood similar to yours, and these are the steps they took to get there. So, it really is about opening their eyes, showing them what's possible, and then creating those opportunities.
Tatiana Arguello
It's really about other things that you gain. The opportunity to look within yourself, to do some self-growth, to do some reflecting, especially this summer where all of us were going through traumatic experiences, to really speak to other people, to learn new skills.
Narrator
As Tatiana Arguello from UAU notes, the value in these programs lies not just in the skills learned, but in the experience of speaking with other people. These can be mentors and supervisors, or other participants. When done right, summer jobs programs expose participants to a diversity of experiences, and a diversity of people.
Tatiana Arguello
I think the beauty in the program is really that it is so diverse. And it's not just ethnically diverse, it's diverse with different opinions, with different experiences, with different even parts of Staten Island or the City that people are coming from.
Narrator
For many participants, the highlight of their summers were the connections they made and the diversity of the programs. Even as these summer experiences help participants imagine a big future, they broaden their present. To close things out, we hear from Benjamin Babayev and Sunny Lee on their summers at Commonpoint Queens.
Benjamin Babayev
I got to make so many more friends that, of different races, that go to different schools in different boroughs even. And we still talk to this day, which is very nice. So, it made my social circle a little bit bigger.
Benjamin Babayev
I got to make new friends that I never really knew of. And since everyone's from different schools all over the city, we got to connect really well. And the final project really helped me, opened my eyes to the issues in the community. My new focus on the inequalities in our education system, where we targeted how minority races experience lack of opportunities that majority races get.
Sunny Lee
I think my favorite part is honestly just…meeting new people, I guess, because I mean the learning aspect is also amazing because I mean, I get to learn about new things. But, I think meeting new people is also great because I can make new friends and I can get to know people in New York that I probably wouldn't know otherwise. So, it's fun to connect with people.
Narrator
J-PAL voices is produced by Dave Lishansky and written and narrated by Rohit Naimpally. Elizabeth Bond designed our logo. Special thanks to Yijin Yang for her inputs and support. Transcription assistance was provided by Caroline Garau and Yiping Li. For this week’s interviews, we thank Rashad Cope, Julia Breitman, Angela Rudolph, Tatiana Arguello, Yiping Li, Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, Alicia Sasser-Modestino, Sara Heller, Benjamin Babayev, and Sunny Lee. Our email address is podcasts@povertyactionlab.org; we would love to receive your comments and feedback.
Narrator
On the next episode of J-PAL Voices...
Alicia Sasser-Modestino
We've been deliberately testing these different mechanisms over time so that we can inform policymakers about which parts of the program seem to be impactful, where they can increase their investments, or how can you translate some of the lessons learned from the summer job program to other year-round activities that you do?