Youth Empowerment Summer:
Crisis Response and Lessons for
the Future of Collective Action
and Work-based Learning
The Youth Empowerment Summer coalition formed in response to the Covid-19 crisis as New York City worked to transition to remote learning and following the announcement of the cut of the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. With the goal of providing early work experiences for teens during Summer 2020, a group including more than 100 nonprofits, community-based organizations, private funders, advocacy groups, intermediary organizations, and, critically, youth activists, came together to ensure that as many teens as possible had high quality experiences. Its work combined efforts around policy and advocacy with supplemental partnerships, funding, and peer-led learning among youth workers and educators. The YES coalition successfully advocated for partial restoration of the city program and created a supplemental support structure for providers through over $1 million in grants leading to 55 implementation and technical assistance partnerships.
Key Lessons from YES 2020
The report on the coalition’s efforts highlights the coalition’s collective impact, with a number of key lessons for the field:
- Instruction: Summer youth employment programs can, and should, be seen as spaces to simultaneously engage youth people socially and emotionally while also developing vital skills that can support equitable futures.
- Program features: While there is no silver bullet to remote work-based learning, careful consideration around key program features—staffing, curriculum, technology, synchronous and asynchronous engagement, scale, and youth agency—can result in powerful learning experiences.
- Inter-generational collaboration: Youth leadership and voice is key in determining work-based learning policy and practice, and stakeholders like adult advocates, policy makers, and intermediaries should intentionally approach and support inter-generational deliberation and collaboration.
- Long term investments for rapid responses: Civic coalitions can mobilize quickly through rapid response designs, provided there is long term investment in field-level infrastructure and intermediaries.
- Process and engagement: Community-led program design within work-based learning can result in models that are more robust, have greater buy-in, and better attend to local conditions.
These lessons should inform future work on summer youth employment programs and the ways the field might imagine civic responses to learning and support for children. Read more in the report below.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Overview
1.2 A Context of Crisis
1.3 Life, Disrupted: Youth Futures under Covid-19
1.4 NYC’s Summer Youth Employment Program in 2020
1.5 The Youth Empowerment Summer Rapid Response Ecosystem
1.6 Research Methods
1.7 Report Roadmap
Chapter 2
Emergence of a Rapid Response Ecosystem: How the YES Coalition Formed
2.1 Overview
2.2 Formation of the YES Coalition
2.3 Analysis
2.4 Discussion and Implications
Chapter 3
Interventions and Impacts of the YES Coalition
3.1 Overview
3.2 Advocacy for funding restoration
3.3 Instructional policy influence
3.4 Instructional policy coordination
3.5 Instructional policy implementation support
3.6 Discussion and Implications
Chapter 4
Organizational Leadership in the Context of Summer 2020
4.1 Overview
4.2 Spring 2020
4.3 Restoration and Policy Roll-out
4.4 Discussion and Implications
Chapter 5
Levers for Impact in Design of Remote Work-Based Learning Models
5.1 Overview
5.2 Case Examples
5.3 Key Levers and Questions for Program Leaders and Policy Makers
5.4 Conclusion
Chapter 6
Humanizing Pedagogy through Social and Emotional Supports in Work-Based Learning
6.1 Overview
6.2 Building Community
6.3 Holding Space for Vulnerable Sharing
6.4 Revitalizing Hope
6.5 Developing Networking Skills
6.6 Unpacking Workplace Discrimination
6.7 Encouraging Help-Seeking Behavior
6.8 Orienting Toward Change
6.9 Conclusion
Appendices
References
Appendix A: Methods
Appendix B: SYEP Summer Bridge 2020 Program Overview
Appendix C: Timeline of YES Coalition Formation Period
Appendix D: List of YES Awardees
Appendix E: YES Design Committee
YES COORDINATING COMMITTEE
YES COORDINATING COMMITTEE
YES COORDINATING COMMITTEE
YES RESEARCH & DOCUMENTATION
YES RESEARCH & DOCUMENTATION
Acknowledgements
The YES coalition was organized and co-led by ExpandED Schools, Beam Center, and Hive NYC Learning Network. Student Success Network and Telos Learning co-led research and documentation, with support from the Wallace Foundation.