Damina Victoria, a high school senior in San Francisco, is looking forward to majoring in business at California State, East Bay this fall. However, the ambitious young woman wasn’t always so focused on the future.
“I was fighting and hanging around with the wrong crowd,” Victoria said about her life before age 16. Everything changed after her probation officer recommended that she get a job through the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program, which has put her to work ever since.
For kids coming up after Victoria, the Department of Children, Youth, and their Families drastically reduced the program’s funding this year, which will mean 500 fewer youth jobs across the city in the new fiscal year that starts in July.
The Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program received $3.2 million for each of the last three years. For the next three years, it will get just $1.8 million, 43 percent less.
Normally the program provides about 1,400 part time, after-school and summer jobs for San Francisco youth.
“The majority of the funding goes to youth wages,” said Becky Lai, a project manager at the youth employment program.
The city’s Department of Children, Youth, and their Families funding runs in three-year cycles and the most recent one ends at the end of June. This coming cycle the department has about 30 percent less to give to non-school activities for children and youth, a category called Out of School Time. That cut leaves the city with about $20 million annually for programs across the city in youth jobs, after school programming, daycare and other services.
“No one is guaranteed that they’re going to be funded more than three years,” said Jill Fox, communications coordinator for the DCYF. Not all of the cuts have been announced yet.
In the Mission District, the youth jobs money goes to Horizons Unlimited, which places youth in after school and summer jobs at nonprofits. This summer the reduction will probably mean 25 fewer spots here, according to Celina Lucero, the program director for Horizons. While demand is always greater than supply, this year there are 170 applications for 50 slots.
“For it to be slashed pretty much in half is outrageous,” Lucero said.
The Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program is the largest source of youth employment in San Francisco. Youth can also get work through San Francisco Youthworks, which couldn’t comment on its budget outlook because it must wait on other city departments to determine what its next year budget will look like.
During the school year, youth hired by public programs can earn about minimum wage to work 10 hours a week after school. They can work up to 20 hours per week in the summer.
Programs like Horizons Unlimited place kids at nonprofits, at the public library, the YMCA, the Recreation and Parks Department, and other similar sites.
Victoria, 18, is finishing up her senior year of high school. She started in the youth employment program, when she was 16, working at the YMCA. With a help of a coordinator in Visitacion Valley, the employment program allowed her to learn people skills, get off probation, and even find a potential career path.
Now she’s finishing up as a project coordinator, training other youth to become leaders and trainers. “I like that I can help leaders become better leaders, as well as help myself,” she said.
Victoria said that students in the program haven’t been exposed to basic job skills, like how to interview, how to dress, or give eye contact and answer questions seriously.
“Everything that we taught in workshops was brand new to them, these weren’t skills that they grew up having,” she said.
If job opportunities are cut there will be “more kids on probation, more kids pregnant, and more kids in trouble because they don’t have more job,” Victoria predicted. “It’s affecting every community of San Francisco.”
“It’s going to be stress on the families too,” Lucero said.
“With the economic crisis, a lot of the focus is on adult unemployment,” Lai said. “Youth jobs have already been a kind of difficult.”
The Department of Children, Youth, and their Families cannot change its budget to bring back funding for youth employment, but the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Education Program staff hopes that enough pressure will be applied to city hall to mandate some funding for jobs for youth.
My job site, coronado park originally known as folsom park closed down.. and that was one of the sites i was at tryna mantain outta trouble!!