Latin American Youth Center

Good morning Madam Chairwoman and members of the D.C. City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at this Public Oversight hearing on the Department of Employment Services (DOES).

I’m here in my capacity as Legal and Strategy Director at the Latin American Youth Center. In my eight years with the organization, I have also served as Chief Operating Officer.

Today, I’d like to share with you a little information about the Latin American Youth Center, describe the worforce programs that we operate with support from the Department of Employment Services, and then offer a few observations on DOES, based on our experience working with the agency.

The Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) is a network of youth centers, charter schools, and social enterprises with a shared commitment to helping youth become successful and happy young adults.

Our anchor site in the Columbia Heights neighborhood is a community-based, multi-cultural youth and family development organization founded in the late 1960s and incorporated in 1974 as a non-profit organization. We work with more than 3,000 young people each year, primarily from the Latino, African-American, African and Caribbean communities. We provide a comprehensive set social services and education and employment programs, working with both in-school and out-of-school youth.

During the summer, in partnership with DOES, LAYC offers the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), providing teenagers with paid work experience and important exposure to work responsibilities. Last summer, more than 180 young people participated.

I have two recommendations or suggestions that relate to SYEP. The first is a small change that would have a big impact. If a young person registers and participates in SYEP one year, let’s not make that person re-register the next year, starting from scratch. That is what happens today. There must be a way to access that registration information, from one year to the next.

The second point is a broader resource recommendation, and it too is straightforward. The city needs more year-round job-readiness and training programs for in-school youth. Focusing on the summer months is not enough. Through Passport to Work, there are only 400 slots for year-round, after-school job readiness programs.

Now, I want to turn to the focus of my testimony today and that’s workforce programs for out-of-school youth.

Over the past ten years, the Latin American Youth Center has operated several successful programs that have concentrated on GED preparation, job readiness and training, and job placement. These include YO, which LAYC operated between 2001-2005 as a partner with the Department of Employment Services, and YouthBuild, which, after ten years as an LAYC program providing construction training and a GED curriculum, opened its doors in September 2005 as a public charter school.

Through these programs, we were able to achieve very high rates of job placement and retention. In 2005, we created our Workforce Investment and Social Enterprise initiative or WISE.

WISE builds on the best practices and learnings of our previous workforce efforts, offering a holistic program of job readiness and life skills training, job placement services, computer instruction, GED preparation, and support services.

WISE’s focus is on helping students define and then achieve their academic and employment goals. We use a wraparound approach, seeking to identify and address challenges that already exist or may arise in a person’s life which can interfere with gaining new employment or educational skills.

Each week, students receive 8 hours of GED preparation, 8 hours of job-readiness training and 3 hours of computer instruction. The job readiness component lasts ten weeks, covering practical skills, such as resume writing, cover letter writing and job interviewing, as well as broader skills such as communication, conflict resolution and goal setting. In addition, participants attend Career Exploration workshops led by employers who are invited on-site to provide students with information on entry-level jobs, benefits, and career opportunities within their companies. Participants also attend DC Job Fairs on a regular basis.

Once students complete the ten-week curriculum, they work with WISE’s Job Developer to find a job, internship, apprenticeship or occupational skills training program.

On average, the GED preparation class takes 12 weeks for students to complete. WISE’s average passing rate on the GED exam is 75%, well above the DC average.

In the past six months, WISE has successfully placed youth in jobs at LAYC’s Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops and at national retailers such as Target and IKEA; in apprenticeships through the DC Department of Apprenticeships and in occupational skills training programs through the University of the District of Columbia.

Additionally, WISE has pioneered new approaches to make it easier for youth to secure employment. For example, this past fall, WISE began offering a new professional certification to youth who pass a national test demonstrating their skills and competencies critical to success in entry-level positions.

That’s a brief description of the workforce programs we offer through WISE. Approximately 250 individuals participated in these programs during FY 06. About one-fourth of those individuals we’re participating through the Department of Employment Services’ Passport-to-Work and Way-to-Work initiatives.

DOES is an important supporter of and partner in LAYC’s work with out-of-school youth. Together, we are targeting and reaching youth who have been out of school and out of work. Building their works skills, providing them with new learning opportunities and helping these young people find and retain meaningful employment is hard, but vitally important work. And together, we are making good strides.

DOES has been helpful, in particular, referring individuals to LAYC and other providers. The agency is doing a good job connecting individuals to resources.

DOES’s provision of a stipend to encourage participation in the workforce programs is smart. These stipends ($100 a week) recognize that many of the participants have financial responsibilities that must be met. The stipends also strengthen participants’ emotional connection to the program.

Unfortunately, with Way-to-Work in particular, we have encountered payment difficulties, where individuals do not receive their full stipends or do not receive their stipends on a timely basis. For example, instead of $100, they will be paid $60. This can be discouraging and lead to overall disillusionment with the program.

WISE strives to build a broad range of skills. Some of our participants are most focused on gaining a job. Others are very focused on preparing for the GED. Still others want to make sure that they strengthen both their education and employment skills and gain new credentials in each area.

WISE and other program providers would benefit from consistency in communications from DOES on the issue of what precisely must occur for an individual to “exit” the program. While DOES has established criteria for exiting, the communication of those criteria is sometimes inconsistent and, at times, confusing. Getting consistent, clear guidelines on the exiting requirements would be helpful.

Lastly, I would just emphasize that DOES is offering and enabling important programs and services for out-of-school youth. But much, much more is needed.

With one out of every twelve teenagers in DC out of school and out of work, there is a huge need for programs that reengage and reconnect our young people. Allocating additional resources to serving out-of-school youth would be a strong investment in our city’s future.

I hope these observations, based on years of experience working with the Department of Employment Services, have been helpful. I very much appreciate the opportunity to testify here today.