New York, NY – On Wednesday, June 11, teens from the Goddard Riverside Beacon program joined with hundreds of youth and supporters on the steps of City Hall to rally for an expansion to the City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). The youth called on Mayor de Blasio to fully fund the City Council’s $14.2 million proposed expansion of the program, which would add 10,000 youth jobs this summer, for a total of 46,000.
With three out of every four youth denied a spot in the popular employment program every year, advocates say enough is enough. For the past several years over 100,000 youth have been turned away each summer, at a time when youth unemployment and concerns about summertime violence are already high.
SYEP is a proven and effective model for engaging youth in positive summer-time experience that offers participants the opportunity to learn critical workplace soft-skills such as time management, teamwork and communication. In addition, with nearly a third of the youth workers filling positions in the City’s summer camps, they add to the capacity of that system to serve children.