The Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) is a youth empowerment program in New York City. It is the nation’s greatest employment program for the youth bringing together over seventy thousand youth aged between fourteen and twenty-four. In this program, the participants from New York City explore paying work experiences and opportunities. Participants are exposed to careers and opportunities which they please in various industries including banking, healthcare, and Information and Technology. During the learning experience, players acquire civic, leadership, and social skills. Proper workplace skills and attitudes are also encouraged in the program. The SYEP project prepares NYC youth for their future careers. The NYC Summer Youth Employment Program is designed to address unemployment, financial illiteracy, and the lack of career exposure in the community. Other aspects of the intervention include the targeted youth beneficiaries of age 14 to 24. Benefits of the program include a reduction of employment rate among the NYC youth, increased financial knowledge, work-ready graduates and a better understanding of the employment experience by the youth. The causal model theory underlying the program is that if New York City youth are empowered, then, the participants and the city shall enjoy social and economic growth. New York has the lowest number of unemployed youth in the nation despite the city having the largest number of youth population (Schwartz & Leos-Urber, 2015). SYEP intervention intends to address the youth unemployment problem in NYC. SYEP is expected to reduce the youth unemployment rate in the city. Participants of the program are expected to make money. The youth participating in the intervention program can make from three hundred dollars to three hundred and eighty-eight dollars per week. This is nine to thirteen dollars per hour; very close to employees receiving minimum wage in the city. By reducing the unemployment rate and enabling the youth to make money, SYEP will also help tackle the financial illiteracy problem among the youth. Programs educating the youth on financial knowledge are also provided for the youngsters. Having little or no knowledge of financial matters can contribute to lower living standards. Poor investment choices, wasteful spending, and poor saving habits are some of the mistakes that financially illiterate youth make. Other serious stresses arising from this ignorance include depression, drug abuse, and crime. SYEP efficiently addresses the financial insecurity problem amongst the NYC youth. The intervention will address the problem of untrained employees in the workforce. This problem can negatively affect the business or even the employees themselves. With little or no training, employees that have no understanding of how their job should be done may fail to reach their goals and end up unhappy. An unhappy workforce may lead to employee turnover. Poor quality of work and low rates of production are also problems associated with a lack of enough training; businesses with untrained staff may lose customers. The unsafe working environment due to work-related accidents may also increase especially with more technical jobs. SYEP intervention to provide work readiness training may prove to be of significant help. According to Bazerman & Brockering (2018), the youth have grown to become passive learners in the regular school curriculums. Research reveals that the lecture-based setting embraced in many schools may limit the youths’ capabilities compared to the project-based learning adopted by SYEP (Baizerman & Brockering, 2018). The SYEP intervention will certainly address this problem among the New York youth. SYEP will be helpful to the youth fresh out of school that has zero networks or mentors. Youths aged between fourteen and twenty-four are the targeted participants of the project. The project is conducted by a community-based voluntary institution. The entire project is financed by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development (Gelber, 2015). Participants are offered real-world employment experience accompanied by essential life skills training. The intervention also exposes the youth to making money, gaining financial knowledge, networking, mingling with mentors, and better understanding their career interests. The youth are the intended beneficiaries of the program. Youth empowerment can be defined as the procedure where youth are enabled to make informed choices and better their lives and of those around them. This has a positive impact on the entire city and the nation as a whole. Studies reveal that the youth of a nation determines the future of the country (Sarthory, 2020). If youths are empowered to turn dreams into reality, everyone wins. By equipping the youth with money-making skill they did not have before, youth empowerment can be used as a means of poverty eradication. SYEP skill development for the youth can help them become financially stable; the NYC youths are the ones to benefit from the intervention by the Department of Youth and Community Development. When the youths are working, increased employability among the youth of the city will boost the GDP of the entire country, therefore, benefiting the entire nation. By providing a good standard of education, SYEP helps the youth understand and appreciate the importance of education. Again, empowering the youth helps the youth themselves and improves the community, socially and economically. Other advantages of the NYC Summer Youth Employment Program are; increased national security, crime rate reduction, and good governance due to educated voters (Gelber, 2015). The interventions provided by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development benefit the city and the participants as well. The increase in NYC’s employment rate among the youth is one of the major expected benefits of the program. The employment rate is directly linked to the economic growth of the nation; working persons contribute to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product and the per capita income (Peterson & Estenson, 2018). Simplified, workers receive pay which is again spent in the same economy to purchase goods and services that they need. Therefore, the more people are employed, the more business is conducted in the economy. More business in New York means a stronger economy for the city and the nation. Empowering the youth means that more youth will be able to achieve their goals, dreams, and aspirations. Money earned in the program can also help start businesses that may prove to be helpful to the business owners and the country at large. Gainful employment may lead to the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful work. Employability among the NYC youth will see them acquire jobs, stay employed, and successfully navigate in the workforce from one job to another throughout their productive careers. Financial literacy taught to the participants of SYEP is another intended benefit of the program. Knowledge about money taught to the NYC participants is important because it helps the participants that are mostly ignorant of the topic comprehend the value of the dollar to manage their finances better. Learners will learn how to budget and save the little money they might have. Financial literacy education in the program also helps learners understand the importance of acquiring manageable debt. Financial education learned by the SYEP participants may also help the learners to cope with stresses like crime, drug abuse, divorce, and depression that arise from financial insecurity. Other financial benefits for the SYEP participants include better preparedness for financial emergencies, the ability to invest, and the ability to help the less fortunate. Work training in a specific career that prepares participants of the program for future employment is another benefit intended by SYEP. High productivity and performance of the participants are expected once they join the labor force. A trained workforce also reduces wastage and promotes better products and service delivery. Organizations hiring SYEP participants will enjoy low wastage of company resources and enjoy better business. These benefits will boost the overall economic structure of NYC. Employees with work readiness training are often happy employees because they have boosted morale; these are the employees that are likely to make big strides and accomplish great achievements in their careers. Any organization with a technical labor force will enjoy a safer work environment after hiring work-ready trained personnel that were trained by SYEP. NYC youth are likely to enjoy benefits reaped from the project-based education offered by the initiative. Participants of the program are expected to develop important problem-solving skills that may be useful in real-life situations. Project-based learning has been proven to promote creativity that may be useful in innovation and product design. Critical thinking, self-confidence, networking, mentorship, and project management are some of the other benefits that New York City youth participating in the Summer Youth Employment Program may enjoy. The program theory of the project is that if New York City youth are empowered by being provided with skills to make money as well as job opportunities the participants and the city will enjoy social and economic benefits like a reduction in the unemployment rate, financial literacy, career experience, and a GDP boost. The NYC Summer Youth Employment Program is conducted by a community-based voluntary institution and financed by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development. The greatest employment program brings together youth from NYC. The project aims to address problems like decreased employment rate among the NYC youth, lack of project-based learning in schools, and financial illiteracy among the youth. Learners aged between fourteen and twenty-four are the targeted participants of the project. The juniors are the intended beneficiaries of the program. SYEP is a youth empowerment program. Some of the intended benefits expected from the program are increased financial literacy, better learning from the project-based strategy the program, increased employment rate among the youth, and better preparedness for the participants as they join the workforce. The model theory underlying the program is that if the youth are empowered, the learners themselves and the entire community will thrive. By intervening with the empowerment program, the city’s department positively affects the NYC youths’ ability to be self-dependent and to become more productive citizens; with the funds at the city’s disposal, it achieves to oversee the intervention’s activities.
References
Baizerman, M., & Brokering, B. (2018). Youth and work. Dept. of Economic Security.
Gelber, A. (2015). The Effects of Youth Employment: Evidence from New York City Summer Youth Employment Program Lotteries. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2545445
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Peterson, W., & Estenson, P. (2018). Income, employment, and economic growth (2nd ed.).
Sarthory, J. (2020). Nyc Summer Pilot Project. Preliminary, Interim, and Final Reports.
Schwartz, A., & Leos-Urbel, J. (2015). Making Summer Matter. National Bureau of Economic Research.
