One East Palo Alto recently completed a long-term strategic planning process.  The process was designed to identify key program initiatives in order to successfully address important quality-of-life issues in the community.

Programmatic Initiative 2: Take the Sponsored Employment Project to Scale

Local CBO's that connect youth to jobs are very few in number and need more resources and capacity to increase job placements for youth at risk.  The main agency reports data showing that in 2002-2003, 290 East Palo Alto youth were registered for work, but less than 8% were placed.  In 2003-2004, 250 youth registered for work, but only 14% were placed. 

In 2005, One East Palo Alto spearheaded a community-wide summer jobs for youth initiative to address limited youth employment opportunities locally, in general, and an alarming gap in opportunities for East Palo Alto youth with multiple employment barriers, in particular.  The initiative's general activities promoted increased awareness of existing job placement resources.  As a result, 250 local youth registered for work and 112, or 45%, of those registered were placed in jobs, a three-fold increase over the previous year.   To address the special needs of individuals with multiple employment barriers, One East Palo Alto worked with local agencies and residents to establish the Sponsored Employment Project (SEP), creating jobs in local nonprofits and public agencies and mentoring relationships for 30 youth and young adults.  

Our strategy in the coming years is to take the SEP to scale and:

• Provide an employer-mentor relationship-based job training experience, and develop community service/leadership development activities for youth in their work assignments.

• Create a project implementation structure in which local residents and stakeholders can lead the design and implementation of project activities.

• Coordinate the development of a network of supporting organizations that can be tapped to make specific contributions to project implementation.

Anticipated outcomes of these activities are that:
 

• More than 100 youth at risk will be placed in meaningful jobs.

• More local stakeholders will be actively engaged in designing the mentor relationships, community service and leadership development components.

• More youth at risk will establish positive adult relationships, strengthen their connections to the community, and pursue opportunities for civic engagement.

One East Palo Alto Neighborhood Improvement Initiative
1798-B Bay Road, East Palo Alto, CA  94303