One East Palo Alto

"If you want East Palo Alto youth to stay safe and away from crime and violence, get us some jobs!" 

                   East Palo Alto youth fish bowl, 2005

The Sponsored Employment Program (SEP) is a successful, grassroots, summer youth jobs initiative in East Palo Alto (EPA), CA. One East Palo Alto (OEPA) has spearheaded this groundbreaking initiative since 2005 through its role as convener of the East Palo Alto Crime Reduction Task Force (EPACRTF).SEP’s goal is to help EPA youth and young adult (YYA) residents, ages 14-24, find the jobs they need to stay productive in the summer, learn valuable employment skills, help support themselves and their families, and develop productive relationships with caring adults. Overall, SEP is designed to provide positive income-earning alternatives and mentoring for EPA YYAs at highest risk, a population that is alarmingly vulnerable to involvement in crime and violence, either as perpetrators or victims or both. As an important part of this design, SEP targets YYAs with multiple barriers to employment.

History and Call to Action. In 2005, OEPA partnered with local agencies and residents to pilot SEP, initially called the Sponsored Employment Project, as an action-oriented community-wide response to then increasing incidents of crime and violence, especially those involving EPA YYAs. That response catalyzed a grassroots movement to reconnect with EPA YYAs, show them that we care, bring summer jobs back to the community and create positive income earning opportunities for those evidencing the greatest need to work. In its pilot phase, SEP established jobs in local nonprofits and public agencies and mentoring relationships for 30 YYAs ages 14-24 with multiple challenges to employment.

SEP as a Model of Collaboration and Partnerships. Collaboration and partnerships are essentially the way that OEPA conducts all of its operations. As such, year round planning and implementation of SEP is led by OEPA and its partners. Initially, three local organizations served as lead implementing partners that collaborated with OEPA to launch and sustain the SEP initiative -- JobTrain (formerly OICW), which has served as SEP’s employer of record, El Concilio of San Mateo County, which has coordinated SEP’s community mentoring component and College Track, which recruited the first set of job placements and has continued to assist with outreach, community service training and overall program monitoring. In 2011, SEP implementing partners expanded to include Live In Peace, which has supported recruitment and fundraising efforts. OEPA also enjoys relationships with several major partners who also address quality of life issues in EPA, especially as they impact youth and families. The first is EPACRTF organizational partners. The second is Youth Empowerment Strategies for Success, a network of 44 youth-serving groups convened by OEPA. These collaborators make substantive contributions to planned SEP outcomes and extensively support program operations as volunteers and donors.

A SEP Program Coordinator leads Summer 2016 operations and is assisted by a team of Peer Mentors, EPA college students home for the summer, who, in turn, are supported by volunteer adult Community Mentors. SEP has served 1054 EPA YYAs since 2005.

SEP Today. Summer 2016 marks the 12th anniversary of SEP operations in which employment, mentoring relationships and community connectedness opportunities will be provided to EPA YYAs at highest risk. SEP jobs place EPA YYAs for six weeks. 30 hours/week with Employer-Sponsors in nonprofit and public sector job sites as well as in a growing number of private sector organizations. All of the job placements, which are are for six weeks, 30 hours/week, give participants supportive, supervised work experiences. For mentoring relationships, OEPA partners with El Concilio of San Mateo County to deliver SEP’s Victor Lopez Community Mentor Project. The actual number of jobs offered through SEP depends on the success of OEPA-led efforts to raise the program’s annual budget, which is based on a cost per participant of $3,000. The total budget covers costs of participant salary stipends, which constitute the largest expenditure (approximately 67%) as well as programmatic supports of mentoring, employment training and skills workshops and kickoff and graduation ceremonies.

One thing is certain… it takes a village to embrace East Palo Alto youth in need and raise winners and SEP definitely has been, is and will continue to be “the place to be” when it comes to doing just that!