NEWS
Can a costly summer jobs program lead to permanent work for youths?
The Washington Post
By Abigail Hauslohner and Robert McCartney
August 5, 2015
The young adults get “success coaches” to discuss their career dreams. “Job readiness” workshops to guide them through hypothetical interviews. An “Attrition Call Center,” lest they think of dropping out. And, finally, a hiring fair next week, where city officials hope hundreds will achieve the goal of a full-time job.
The District government has gone into overdrive this year to prove that the Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program can find lasting jobs for youths ages 22 to 24.
It’s a new challenge for the program, which has long been known for funneling taxpayer dollars to keep at-risk teens out of trouble for six weeks — but also for questionable results when it comes to helpings those youths secure permanent employment.
It’s an early gamble for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). She pushed to persuade a skeptical D.C. Council to spend an extra $5 million to expand the program to people older than 21. If she can’t show that the older cohort can hack it in the professional world, the council is unlikely to approve a permanent expansion.
Still, success would be only the beginning of an answer to long-standing complaints that the program — one of the largest and most costly summer jobs projects in the country — serves a fuzzy purpose that has little to do with real-world work.
Many of the 15,000 participants, especially the youngest ones, are paid much of the time not for work experience but to be trained in how to dress for an interview, sell themselves in 60 seconds or apply to college.
Critics say the program still doesn’t do enough to provide skills to transform short-term gigs into full-time work.
“The summer is not used very strategically — it’s just six weeks of work,” said Marcia Huff, a senior manager at the Young Women’s Project, a nonprofit group that employed 30 participants this year. “I haven’t seen where the program is used as a launchpad for getting [youths] into a GED or vocational training program. . . . That’s what the summer should be used for.”
Finding work, not trouble
Participants describe widely variable experiences. They are assigned to jobs, internships and leadership seminars across the city. About four out of five work for the government or local nonprofits, with the rest at private companies.
Some enter data or answer phones. Others mind children at summer camps or day-care facilities. All participants are paid between $5.25 and $9.25 an hour, depending on their age. Many younger teens said they spend their time studying for the SATs, participating in “leadership” and “confidence-building” exercises, and visiting colleges.
New York City’s summer jobs program tops the District’s in sheer number, with 42,000 participants. But New York’s population is more than 10 times bigger, so the District’s program is larger on a per capita basis.
For some, the program provided a meaningful opportunity to learn new skills.
“I learned a lot about office work, filing, copying,” said Denasia Elder, 21, who did research for the Young Women’s Project. “I learned how to conduct myself in interviews and anger management.”
At the nonprofit Black Student Fund, Executive Director Leroy Nesbitt put his 20-plus interns to work redeveloping the organization’s Web site, conducting Internet research and compiling a list of college scholarships.
And at another nonprofit, Helping Young People Evolve (H.Y.P.E.), teenage interns followed a “Positive Decision Making” curriculum — and learned how to mime.
For others, it was mainly a sure route to earn cash. Without the program, “I wouldn’t be making no money,” said Delonzia Tucker, 17, a camp counselor who said he probably wouldn’t have bothered looking for work otherwise.
“This is just the easiest way to actually get a job, so I chose to pick this,” he said, standing in a doorway with friends at a Southeast Washington housing development while the kids he was assigned to watch played several yards away.
Others said the program kept them out of trouble.
Ajaye Smith, 22, said: “It helped me, honestly, get away from the streets. . . . I was just out there doing anything for money.”
Smith was one of 20 people who spent the summer learning how to install solar panels at WDC Solar in Anacostia. Mark Davis, the company’s president, said that at the end of the summer, he plans to hire between eight and 12 of the summer employees at $15 to $17 an hour.
Maurika Holland, 22, said it was her first job since 2011, partly because a criminal record, which she didn’t specify, had made it hard to find work.
“A lot of us come from Ward 8, the ghetto. A lot of people are down on us,” Holland said.
The solar company job “really changed my persona,” Holland said. “It made me realize I’m grown up now.”
The Summer Youth Employment Program has made some noticeable improvements in recent years, according to officials, participants and youth advocates.
There are fewer pay disputes. Youths are less likely to be “warehoused” or paid to sit in schools or churches with nothing to do.
Officials at the Department of Employment Services, which administers the program, said that this year, the department also collected personal data from each participant so they can better monitor them throughout the year.
Courtney Snowden, Bowser’s deputy mayor for greater economic opportunity, choked up as she listened to WDC Solar employees express their gratitude for the program.
“Our babies get such a bad rap,” said Snowden, who participated in the program as a teenager. “I think how often people just need an opportunity, and that’s what this program gives.”
Still, most of the two dozen young participants interviewed for this article described learning only basic skills, such as simple computer proficiency, the importance of punctuality and controlling one’s temper in the office.
“Coming on time is a big part of responsibility for me,” Art Brown, 18, said of his work at the Young Women’s Project.
Other youths cited learning “confidence” and dress codes as the primary skills they had acquired.
A routine part of every summer
The Summer Youth Employment Program has deep roots in the District’s predominantly black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, where many adults recall their own youth experiences working for the legendary Barry.
In many cases, the program resembles a paid summer camp — a source of positive activity meant to fill the humid gaps between school years while ideally giving the city’s poorest youths new skills and résumé bullet points along the way.
In the eyes of many young participants, the program was never supposed to be an avenue to full-time work come September. Most plan to return to school in the fall, including at least a quarter of those in the 22-to-24-year-old pilot group.
Erik Beard said he held a summer job through the Summer Youth Employment Program every summer since he was 14 before aging out of the program last year and finding part-time work at the Six Flags theme park in Maryland.
When he learned that the program was including older people, Beard quit Six Flags and returned to the program as a camp counselor on the ground floor of his Southeast housing complex.
“I was like, ‘Yes! I can do summer jobs instead of Six Flags!’ ” he said. “Plus, Summer Jobs is paying me more.”
But there also seemed to be little effort to build on skills acquired in previous summers, a characteristic that has worried critics.
Rasheeda Twitty, 17, said this summer marked her fourth in the program. But she spent her days in a classroom.
“We take SAT classes for work. We do that for half the day, and the other half we do ‘guerrilla arts,’ ” such as social media or performance-arts classes, Twitty said.
Justin Strange, 19, said he was in his fifth year, but he had only just learned how to use his e-mail address. “My first two jobs, I didn’t do anything. You just sat around and got paid,” Strange said.
The program’s director, Gerren Price, acknowledged that not every summer experience resembles a sample of work in the real world.
“We look at our program in two really distinct paths,” Price said. For younger participants, the program aims to provide exposure to “different careers, exposing them to positive work behaviors and attitudes, and making sure they’re connected to adults who can help them to be ready for job opportunities down the line.”
The other path is “our work-experience track, which is really more of an internship or traditional summer job sort of experience,” Price said.
City officials, including skeptics on the council, seem to agree that the program is a good thing, even it it’s imperfect.
“It’s kind of a Band-Aid to a bigger problem,” said council member David Grosso (I-At Large). A genuine solution, he added, would involve mending the city’s troubled public school system.
“If you want to keep young people off streets, then give them a quality education,” Grosso said.
The summer will culminate in a jobs event Aug. 14, in which the city will bring in employers to meet with the newly job-ready youths. Officials said they have already lined up 30 employers that are ready to hire. The Bowser administration informally promised the council that they would eventually find jobs for at least 350 of the 1,000 older youths in this year’s pilot program.
Bowser said in an interview that she expanded the program because she has heard many young adults say that their biggest obstacle to finding permanent jobs was a lack of work experience.
“We have a serious youth unemployment problem,” Bowser said. “They rely on these work experiences to build a résumé to get a good-paying job.”
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