On the final episode of this season of J-PAL Voices we hear how summer jobs programs are changing the narrative for their participants.
In arguing that changing the narrative is a critical strategy in fostering mobility from poverty, the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty notes that “the narratives we use to make sense of the world shape our attitudes and ultimately the policies we devise and endorse”. On the final episode of this season of J-PAL Voices we hear how summer jobs programs are changing the narrative for their participants.Angela Rudolph in Chicago tells us that young people are just waiting for us to see them and invest in them. Julia Breitman in New York City is firm in her conviction that the desire to be agents of their own change exists in every young person. Summer jobs programs are not the silver bullet and it is too much to expect them to dismantle systemic inequalities. But they are a valuable part of fostering mobility from poverty and giving young people the tools that they need to solve conflict and develop the soft skills that will serve them well in the long run.
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Narrator
In interviewing people for this series, I have usually ended interviews with an open-ended question: What final takeaway did the interviewee want to leave listeners with? Here’s what Angela Rudolph, Deputy Commissioner for Youth Affairs in Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services, told me.
Angela Rudolph
I think far too often, we have this sense as older people that young people are lazy, young people aren't really interested in doing that much. And one of the biggest lessons that I walked away from this summer with, was the deep and unabiding desire that young people have to feel like they have agency and the ability to make things better.
Narrator
To hear Angela speak about this desire in Chicago’s youth, was to also hear her counterpart in New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development, Senior Director of Youth Employment Programs Julia Breitman.
Julia Breitman
People complain about lazy teenagers, or what not. But that's not an experience that any of us have ever seen. To give you an example, our program receives typically about 150,000 applications a year for less than half the jobs. This year, we received over 137,000 applications. The application was only open for a week because it was a reinstatement, and we were only able to hire about 35,000 young people. So, you could see the need and the desire of young people to work.
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 Six: Change the Narrative.
Narrator
In 1988, Father Greg Boyle, pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles, founded Jobs for a Future, a jobs training program for youth involved with gang activity and violence. An aphorism often associated with Father Boyle, that “nothing stops a bullet like a job”, came out of his work with Jobs for a Future, which subsequently became Homeboy Industries.
Alicia Sasser-Modestino
The reduction in crime that we find is strongly correlated with improvements in these soft skills and community engagement, such as resolving conflict with a peer, but really not correlated with raising academic aspirations or your job readiness skills. So, it's really not so much that nothing stops a bullet like a job, in terms of at least the job readiness part of it. But it's really more about getting to practice those soft skills with supervisors and other coworkers. And you can think about being able to replicate those experiences maybe in other settings, right?
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That’s Northeastern University economist Alicia Sasser-Modestino discussing her research showing that Boston’s summer jobs program leads to reductions in violent crime. Rashad Cope, the Director of the Department of Youth Engagement and Employment with the City of Boston, spoke with me about how they are moving forward based on the research findings.
Rashad Cope
Her research has also told us that summer jobs, in some ways, increases young people's, aspirations around academic achievement and young people, by virtue of participating in summer jobs––and maybe that's them being connected to mentors and coaches and leaders and healthy adults––it increases the likelihood that they may be interested to go on to pursue postsecondary education. And that's really incredible. And then also, some of her studies have also linked back to how summer jobs, within a community like the City of Boston, improves behavioral outcomes, and young people are more engaged by way of them participating in summer jobs.
Alicia Sasser-Modestino
I think we're seeing in Boston, just because we can collect the data and we can measure it, that there are these behavioral changes that happen from having a job. And I think the other thing that people don't realize is, even though it's a six-week program, if there's something that happens during those six weeks, that's transformational for that one youth that puts them on a different path, you're going to get these longer-term outcomes. Cause I think people might question, “How can a six-week program affect somebody in the next year or two after participating?” But, I went to one of the Summer jobs celebrations that they have at the end of the year for the Boston private industry council. And we did a focus group with youth there who worked for Sanofi Genzyme. So, big biotech company in Boston. And one of the youth in there was a young African-American male. And he talked about his job and how he had been assigned to IT at Sanofi Genzyme. And he was really not excited about this job initially, because he thought it was boring compared to all the cool lab stuff that they do. But then, he realized that the rest of the organization can't operate without IT. And he was managing databases and that if the database goes down, everything stops at Sanofi Genzyme. And so, he was this crucial component of keeping things going. And he started rattling off all sorts of like technical stuff that I don't even remember exactly what it was. But you could tell that this is a transformational experience for him, that he had not even thought about these kinds of operations going on. How critical this kind of infrastructure was and how interesting this kind of career path could be.
Rashad Cope
They're more engaged because they develop a sense of who they are by participating in summer jobs. They develop increased competency in certain areas, they know how to deal with conflict resolution, and they just know how to engage better with adults and peers. So, I think Alicia has been really, really important to the work here in the city of Boston around summer jobs and we are continuing to find ways to work with Alicia to advance her work around reducing inequalities among young people through summer youth employment by creating just high-quality workforce development experiences and making sure that we, together and collectively, are preparing youth for educational and career pathways into adulthood.
Narrator
In a 2015 interview with the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney that we will link to in the show notes, Father Boyle echoed much of what Alicia and Rashad told me. While jobs are important, he identified resilience and the right guidance at a time when people are figuring out their place in the world, as critical factors.
Sara Heller
In this time when we're sort of talking about alternatives to policing and what can we invest in that might help violence, summer jobs programs are not going to fix all the problems, they're not going to fix systemic racism, there's a lot of big changes that society needs. But it is, I think, one piece of the puzzle when you ask what programs could we invest in that aren't policing that might keep kids out of the criminal justice system and help improve their lives and it seems like this might be one of them.
Narrator
Sara Heller is an economist at the University of Michigan who has evaluated Chicago’s summer jobs program. As she notes, summer jobs programs are not going to create a pathway to jobs entirely by themselves, nor are they going to solve the problem of violence and crime entirely. But they can be part of an effective package of solutions.
Sara Heller
Thinking about all of the societal discussions right now about institutional racism in the criminal justice system and alternatives to policing, I think summer jobs programs can't be the answer. There needs to be a lot of systemic change, a lot of conversations at a lot of levels to address the scope of the problem. But I think they can be an answer. That they're part of a package of things that when we say, well, what could we spend money on that is going to help reduce violence? That's going to help keep youth and especially minority youth out of the criminal justice system that's not policing? And there is good evidence that these programs do that. And so, I don't think that they can operate at a scope. I don't think the size of the changes that they induce have any hope of solving the problem entirely, but I think they can absolutely be part of the package of programming that city governments and state governments are thinking about in terms of how to reduce violence and reduce criminal justice contact in a way that doesn't involve the police.
Narrator
Moreover, as Alicia Sasser-Modestino’s research in Boston tells us, summer jobs programs teach kids resilience, soft skills, and conflict resolution. And they offer individuals hope and opportunity when they clearly desire it, something that Angela Rudolph in Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services sees as a large part of the value of summer jobs programs.
Angela Rudolph
Yes, having a job is helpful and it does have an impact on violence. But it's not just the job, right? [Cut: It is all of those things that we learned many years before, around youth development in general, that] The way that you help young people, isn't just by giving them a wage. You help young people by making sure that they understand that there are people out here who care about them and who are invested in their success, and who are going to be there for them if they run into difficulty and if they are trying to figure things out. Young people are also looking to feel useful and looking to feel connected to someone. That's also a part of what the job, in this case the One Summer Chicago Plus, brought to the table.
Danielle Ellman
Summer youth employment program has a qualitative effect on what they think about their future and their locus of control for future, right? Because if I think that life is happening to me, then likely I'm not going to change my experiences and my opportunity. But if I think that I can be self-directed and I can make choices, then I am going to more than likely be that much more successful. And I think the summer youth employment program allows a young person to feel in control, to be employed, to make a decision about what type of job they want to have, who they want to experience that job with what, what is the leading need of how they pick their job. And I think that starts to say, life is in your hands and there are really positive choices that you can make.
Narrator
That’s Danielle Ellman, Chief Executive Officer at Commonpoint Queens in New York, talking about their summer youth Employment program. I asked Danielle how a single program in a single summer could have the sorts of impacts that rigorous research in New York, Boston, and Chicago has found. Where Alicia Sasser-Modestino pointed to the transformational impact of the summer experience on participants, Danielle highlighted the transformational impact on the groups that serve those participants. Groups like Commonpoint Queens.
Danielle Ellman
For so long, people were like, “Oh, you work in summer youth employment program. That's such a quick thing. It's over in a hot flash.” And I've always pushed back on that notion because it is an intervention in a moment in time that opens the door to so much more that we can do for young people and their families in ways that we wouldn't connect with if not for the fact that they need a summer job.
Erica Chen
It was really nice to see how over three months we were able to get so close and, just saying goodbye to that was like an optimistic moment actually. Cause it was like, we learned all this stuff and now we're gonna carry it into our futures.
Narrator
Erica Chen is currently a first-year college student, carrying forward her experience from previous summers with Commonpoint Queens.
Erica Chen
I think my favorite part of Commonpoint was that it was local and it was a small building and a small group of people working together to serve the youth and the community. I felt that was, there was something so down to earth about that and something so genuine. So, that was one of the aspects that drew me to Commonpoint even more.
Narrator
The importance of community in the success of summer jobs programs is something that we heard about from Rashad Cope back in Episode Two. In addition, Rashad and other program directors noted how much the community can get back from the participants in these programs. Tatiana Arguello, Director of Workforce Development at United Activities Unlimited in Staten Island, New York, is effusive in noting this point.
Tatiana Arguello
A lot of the times, we really frame this as an opportunity for our young people, right? But it is an opportunity for our business community. It is an opportunity for our community as a whole, because when you see what these young people are capable of, when you see how they think. Despite all of this, “Oh, young people are, could be lazy or it could be whatever.” It's not true. They're so compassionate. They're so hard working and they think and act in different ways than maybe some of the older generations. But it's just as valuable. And once you really see how valuable our young people are, and you give them a seat at the table, boom. It could be, it could be a change for the organization. It could be changing for our community. They really are the future and they really deserve a seat at the table. And when they do have that seat at the table, holy moly, I think that our decisions are a lot more thought out and a lot better.
Narrator
At the start of this series, we spoke with economist Larry Katz about his work on the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty. The Partnership proposes a set of five interlocking strategies to dramatically increase mobility from poverty. In each episode of this series, we have looked at summer jobs programs through the lens of a different strategy. Ensure zip code is not destiny.
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.
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Transform data use.
Judd Kessler
This research agenda, at least for me, is a story about the ability of organizations to keep track of data and the availability of the administrative data.
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Provide support that empowers.
Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend
I am the beneficiary and the product of the investment of many caring adults, the investment of many great educational opportunities and also many great mentors who have helped me along the way.
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Create access to good jobs.
Erica Chen
What originally led me to apply was, actually just getting exposure to different work fields. Like, I specifically looked into civic engagement because I thought I wanted to go into law at that time. And it gave me experiences and insights that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.
Narrator
And finally, changing the narrative. The Partnership underlines that “the narratives we use to make sense of the world shape our attitudes and ultimately the policies we devise and endorse”, something that I keep coming back to when speaking with the people involved with these summer jobs programs.
Julia Breitman
The other thing about poverty, is that it's a poverty of understanding of what is open to you.
Narrator
As people like Julia Breitman in New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development repeatedly told me, the desire to progress is there with all young people. For policies to truly encourage and foster mobility from poverty, they must recognize that it is up to us to meet this desire and to empower kids to be agents of change.
Angela Rudolph
And one of the kind of overwhelming themes was this kind of wonder that people had. That they saw things in themselves that they didn’t really recognize beforehand and that they had struggled with, particularly because of what happened with the COVID crisis. And so, I just want people to know that young people are waiting for them to see them, to invest in them, and to really kind of offer themselves as a guide, to kind of figure out what is the way forward.
Narrator
That’s Angela Rudolph in Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services. To close things out, we’ll leave it with one of the youths whom Angela’s department invested in many years ago. Yiping Li participated in Chicago’s One Summer Chicago summer jobs program when she was 13; today, she works with me at J-PAL North America on research and policymaking of the kind that has gone into summer jobs programs.
Yiping Li
I think it was interesting because there was sort of the immediate impact and then the other wave of emotions and reflection that I get when I think back to this program. So initially when I immediately came out of it, I definitely felt more independent, like I could take on these responsibilities. And like I mentioned, it was sort of the summer after I graduated from elementary school and it's going into high school and you certainly don't know what that new next phase of your life is like. And so, having gone through this program, it gave me the confidence that I could take on the next four years, the next chapter of my life, just knowing that I could take on new responsibilities and be more mature.
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This inaugural season of J-PAL Voices was 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 Angela Rudolph, Julia Breitman, Alicia Sasser-Modestino, Rashad Cope, Sara Heller, Danielle Ellman, Erica Chen, Tatiana Arguello, and Yiping Li. Our email address is podcasts@povertyactionlab.org; we would love to receive your comments and feedback. Thank you so much for listening and for your support this season.