- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream are made possible by the generous support of PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(bright upbeat music) (bell tinkling) - Hello and welcome to "The City Club of Cleveland" where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive here, a proud member and today is January 15th and we are once again, live from the studios of our public media partner, 90.3 WCPN Ideastream, we continue to be very grateful for their partnership and support.

It has been a week friends, a week that felt like a decade, I know, riots and insurrection and impeachment and in the coming weeks, we will be looking at all of these as well as vaccination efforts but today we're looking ahead to the summer.

Specifically, to the importance of summer jobs for young people.

Whatever you're doing right now, I wanna ask you to pause for a moment unless you're driving and think back to your first summer job.

Myself, I was a dishwasher at a pizza restaurant and I loved the job, the paycheck was whatever it was, I was 14 and making minimum wage but what I really loved was the responsibility and the chance to be a part of something, anything bigger than myself and also figuring out how to meet or exceed the expectations of those I worked with.

And I wanna ask you to think of your first summer job, what did it mean to you?

What skills and qualities, what things did you learn that turned you into who you are today?

A summer job is a key piece of training young people to become citizens who make contributions to their community and their nation.

But too often, too many young people from poor neighborhoods, who of course, all too often these days are Black and Brown young people, do not have access to these kinds of opportunities.

And frankly, COVID has made it worse.

Throughout the pandemic, young people aged 16 to 24 were among the hardest hit with unemployment.

Their unemployment rates jumped to nearly 30% last April, it was 13% at the same point among older adults.

At this critical point in their lives, many teens are unable to find employment that provides the critical growth that they need.

So today we're going to talk about three, with, sorry, we're going to talk with three local leaders about summer jobs, their influence on career preparedness and the role summer employment plays in disrupting cycles of economic inequality.

Joining us today are Dale Anglin, she's program director for Youth and Health and Human Services at Cleveland Foundation.

In her role, Dale works with partners on responsive grant making and large-scale long-term projects related to education, support services, mentorship, violence prevention and summer employment.

Also with us Craig Dorn, he's president and CEO of Youth Opportunities Unlimited.

Since its founding in 1982, approximately 160,000 teens and young adults have obtained a job or internship through Youth Opportunities Unlimited, earning about $60 million in salaries and stipends.

And some of those young people have worked for Patrick Kenney, Chief Operating Officer at CHN Housing Partners.

They provide summer job and other work experiences to youth and young adults in CHN Housing Partners, housing programs.

If you have questions for our speakers, you can text them to 330-541-5794, it's 330-541-5794.

If you're on Twitter, tweet your question @TheCityClub and we will work them into the program.

Dale Anglin, Craig Dorn and Patrick Kenney, Pat Kenney, welcome to the program.

It's great to have you all with us.

- [Craig] Thank you.

- [Dale] Thank you.

- [Patrick] Thank you.

- [Dale] Thank you.

- I wanna start by...

I mean, I think a lot of us take summer work, summer jobs for granted and I wanna ask all of you collectively but starting with you, Dale Anglin of the Cleveland Foundation, to make the case for why summer jobs in the City of Cleveland and in our urban areas should matter to all of us across the region and why we should be spending public dollars on them.

- Thank you so much for having me, Dan.

I think summer youth employment in particular, meets the goals of our community and definitely of our foundation.

We've invested in summer jobs for years now and we wanna do more going forward.

I all, it, it's not like there's always a silver bullet for solving most problems but summer employment for young people is as close to a silver bullet as you're gonna get for a number of different areas.

And I wanna name them, one, is that we know through the, through a lot of research across the country, not just in Cleveland, that when you have more kids involved in summer youth opportunities, there's less violence among that age group in your city, summer youth employment helps make sure kids actually stay in school, better attendance and get better grades because they understand the relationship between their work and schooling, it helps expose young people to career pathways, so they get a sense of not just what they might wanna do but what they might not wanna do.

And now you hear those buzzwords a lot, social-emotional learning, how important it is for young people to develop that skill set in addition to math and reading.

Well, it turns out summer youth employment helps them build relationships with adults beyond their parents or caregivers and their teachers, to help foster that social-emotional learning.

So it really helps so many different community goals and I'll add one more, when you name, when you talk to young people of low-income means in particular, who've gone to college, most of the ones who end up actually graduating college, have had an internship or some youth employment experience because they understand now why the world of work relates to their college experience, they get, they understand the why.

So it just hits so many community, economic and foundation goals that it's important to invest in.

- Dale Anglin is with the Cleveland Foundation, Craig Dorn, your program at Youth Opportunities Unlimited, also known as Y.O.U., is a primary means, through which children, young people are accessing employment in the summers.

Can you, can you just, I just wanna get it out there.

I mean, explain what you do and why you think it matters to the broader community.

- Thanks Dan.

So Y.O.U.

has been running summer jobs program since 1983 and in any given year we'll help between two and sometimes as many, 4,000 young people, mostly in the City of Cleveland and inner-ring suburbs, secure a summer job, which is often their first job.

There's two reasons I think summer jobs really stand out.

One is the kind of reasons that people know of and maybe think of that keeps young people safe and off the streets, it does other types of things that Dale described in terms of teaching young people work values for the first time and it is often the first work experience they learn financial literacy, learn how to save money and what to do when you get a paycheck.

What's really impressive though about a summer job opportunity, is the potential to disrupt cycles of economic inequity, crime and educational outcomes.

So just to piggyback on what Dale has said, we were very interested in knowing that Cleveland replicate what has happened nationally.

So we retained Case Western Reserve, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development to study young people who were in the summer jobs programs from 2013 to 2017 and I was really blown away with the results.

So there's, the study was able to do a quasi-experimental design in a statistically significant relationship where if you participate in a simple six-week summer job, there really are fewer delinquency filings, you have lower adult incarceration rates, better school attendance and higher graduation rates.

And again, these were all statistically significant, so the opportunity and the return on investment for a summer job is really amazing.

- Pat Kenney, turning to you after Craig Dorn from Y.O.U., you, you essentially, Pat at CHN Housing Partners, is a customer of, of Y.O.U.

They place more than 100 students in the summer with CHN Housing Partners.

Why do you do it?

That's a lot of responsibility to take on.

- Yep.

We really do it and we look at it through the lens of our children who are in our housing.

So while Craig and Cleveland Foundation constantly is out trying to solve the issue for the, for the world or for the County, we look at it in a lens from, how do we assist our families, the families who are living in our properties and are on the process of buying their homes and how do we stabilize that?

And from the big picture it's really about reversing these trends of, of inequity and lack of opportunity and lack, of lack of access.

And personally for me, which has been kind of a personal campaign, is that things are not equal in our country.

There're access to relationships, access to opportunity is not readily available in low-income communities and specifically, if you're a young adult who is Black or Brown, it is certainly added disadvantage.

So from our perspective of why it's important to us is how do we, how do we strengthen that ability of success for those young persons that are in our houses?

The other thing is, we just notice so much, if a young adult sits idle and is not gainfully employed or has a purpose or is in some type of activity, that's absolutely gonna lead to them getting in trouble and much worse, much worse of that is obviously going to jail or just, just the kind of violence that is seen throughout our communities and this is a way to give an alternative, as well as to get them on the path of both, both what, what Craig was talking about also.

And then lastly, and kind of a selfish reason is, we take a holistic approach at CHN to our families and we're, we're pretty much the family stability on top of being brick and mortar but what we try to do is we try to create a wholistic approach, so while the parents of those children are out working and doing their thing, we want all of the members of that family to be contributing and the, the more they're have an opportunity to have a job, they're contributing both income and process to that family and they're not really being a deterrent, just looking for needs, money to be spent, they can bring some of their own in.

So, that's really why it's important to us.

- Pat Kenney is Chief Operating Officer for CHN Housing Partners and if you're just joining us, you're with "The City Club Friday Forum" and we're talking about the role that summer jobs play, not just in providing a paycheck to young people but as a true source of kind of community development.

And I'm using that term rather broadly to think about everything we mean by community development, by developing a stronger community, not just a stronger workforce.

This is part of the workforce, series on workforce development that we're doing here at "The City Club" but really it's, it's a little bit broader than that when you, when you think about it.

If you wanna join our conversation, if you have a question for our panel, then please text your question to 330-541-5794.

When you do, add in what your first summer job was or your favorite summer job and you can also do that on Twitter, we're on Twitter, @TheCityClub, so just tweet us your question and include your favorite summer job as well.

And if you're on Twitter too, we've just tweeted out a link to the report that Craig Dorn of Y.O.U.

mentioned as well.

Pat Kenney, what was your favorite summer job and what did you learn from that and how do you make sure that you are, you and your team are teaching the same kinds of skills and keeping that in mind with the 100 or so employees that you hire every summer?

- Sure, thank you.

It's really, it was kind of my first summer job and kind of thinking and preparing for this discussion today, I remember I think I was probably 13 or 14 years old and it was my father who created kind of an access, an opening to a local kind of IGA grocery store in the neighborhood.

And that was my first, that was my first summer job and I stocked shelves, I cleaned up and it was a family owned business and I recall that I even, 'cause they lived around the corner from their store, I remember going over and I had to paint the fence at their house.

And so, what it, what it really taught me is just having something, both something to do, something to earn, something that you have some value in and even as a young kid, just having your own money and having an ability to be doing something with your time is really important.

And you know, that, that rested and stayed with me because part of what I see is a problem across the board and where we see in CHN as well is access is not provided.

Where you commonly think and I've done the same thing for my son when, when my son was in college and he was looking for a summer internship, what did we do?

We reached out to the relationships and the business persons that we've, we've, we've acquired along the way and we've made those connections and then once the connection is made, it's up to that individual to take it to the next step and go their own path.

But what I've noticed here, is there is really, the access there is denied, the relationships don't exist.

People are, are out living and dining and doing their own thing and they don't have what, it seemed like it was a commonplace for us where somebody made a connection for you and got you that introduction.

So that, that first job kind of stays with me because it was a, it was a relationship that my father provided for me and I think it's, it's important for us, that's why we're doing what we're doing here, is in the absence of those relationships, how do we provide that, that opportunities?

Kids flourish when you give it to them, they, they're they're sponges and they, they totally start getting and seeing how that value comes about.

And they watch some of their other friends who don't have a job and they're just kicking around the playground or they're getting in trouble and they can start to associate and see that there's a significant uptick in this kind activity.

- Pat Kenney real quick, can you run down the list of sort of what you have them do?

What are the things there that the, that the young people are doing for CHN?

- Sure, so again, when we started, we started partnering, we've a long history with Y.O.U.

but I've known Craig for 30 something years but we started in 2014 and we called them and just said, "Hey, is there, is there a way we can partner?"

and of course they said, yes.

And we, we were trying to put 50 kids who lived in our families, we only worked with the kids in our families, to work.

And so we did a registration and application, 500 kids applied for those 50 jobs.

And that was, that became...

It was like a, the light bulb went off and we said, "Okay, obviously we got to get in this game as a, as a significant business line".

And so as we did, we, the, the first 50 jobs that we did, they were really working for departments at CHN.

So they were all over our operating departments, they were our construction, our maintenance, our accounting our IT, our sales department, customer service and what we did was literally kind of created these internships where they, they contribute, they learn, they also learned obviously that, the value of being on time, the value of what to look like, what to dress, how to, how to, you know, how to interact with people, all those things that never really existed for 14, 15, 16 year olds, this is their first opportunity.

So as I mentioned in our, our preview, we kinda strong-arm some of the directors of our departments to say, "Hey, this is important.

We need to invest into these young adults and it's, and it's gonna come back tenfold".

So those were, those were, human resources, everything that makes up our business, we're a 230 company, employee company and have a lot of moving parts.

So we just position them really in every bit of the operating divisions.

- Craig Dorn of Y.O.U., turning to you for a second, your first summer job or your favorite summer job and, you know, and then also but how many different employers are you working with at this point?

- Yeah, so my, my summer job was at a place called Davis Bakery and what I, it was my only summer job, so it was my first and only and what I learned from there that has really stuck with me is two things.

One is, it really underscored some of the value, it's just the things we've talked about, the value of going to work and just a different environment to perform in and it really resonated with me as a young person and so I actually stayed there every summer, that's why it was my only summer job.

I also learned how much I hate food service and making sandwiches.

So I remember very distinctly one point while waiting on a customer, making a mental note, I got to go to college and make sure I do not have a career in food service, so it had that benefit as well.

Y.O.U.

works with, on any given summer between three and 500 employers and they really range from...

Potentially CHN covers in their one job, covers just about every position you can imagine but through our employers we work with, a lot of community-based organizations 'cause we really think of it as the Y.O.U.

summer job but we really think of it as the community summer job program and we happen to be stewards of it.

So any non-profit you name, from Boys & Girls Club to Esperanza and every community-based organization and community development organizations in Cleveland, those are our big cadre of our employers.

And then in the private sector there's a lot of hospitality and food service, as that is often an initial job but we also do have relationships with the hospital systems and some other employers where, especially the older youth who maybe have gone through the program a couple of years or associated with a community partner, can do what might be considered a little bit higher-level job at a place like the Cleveland Clinic Metro or UH.

- Dale Anglin, your first or favorite summer job and then beyond that, the Cleveland Foundation's interest in this.

How much is the Cleveland Foundation investing every year in summer employment for area teens?

- So my, my favorite, I think summer job and I held it for three summers, was I actually worked for government.

It actually helped propel me into, I think some of what I've been doing today, I worked for the city of Chicago Summer Lunch Program where you delivered lunches to the summer camps and I learned how government works and somehow doesn't work.

And we would get, we would be on the calls when the lunches didn't come on time, when they were spoiled or somebody got too many or anything like that and I got to meet so many different types of people, Oh my gosh!

That sparked my interest frankly, in government and public policy and I've been doing a lot of that work ever since.

'Cause I did not know you could do that as a career, I didn't understand that that, my parents weren't in any, my mom was a teacher, I just thought that's all you did basically, was teach.

And frankly, the, the, the Cleveland Foundation, we invest, I think we're the largest granter for Craig outside of the government and we probably give them somewhere between six and $800,000 every year to support their administrative costs but also wages for young people both in Cleveland and in the entering suburbs.

And I was just talking to Craig about how we could do more of that because frankly, the only way that cities around the country just look at many cities who have boosted the number of slots that they have for young in these programs, is it has to be a public private partnership.

It has to be a mixture of government, philanthropic dollars and corporate dollars.

And Craig does have some corporations that help pay the wages but frankly in Cleveland, we need a lot more.

And he can give you the stats, we used to have a lot more, we are not and we need to go back.

So we're really hoping to spark a campaign over the next few years to get more corporations and many people, even nonprofits to help pay the wages of these kids.

Because it solves so many of the problems, name... Just when it gets warm, talk to any adult who lives in Cleveland, not just the police, anybody and they're gonna say, "Oh no, the kids are gonna be out again".

This helps solve that problem and gives them something to do that is productive.

- The, how much, how much wages are we talking about per, per child, Dale?

Or Craig.

- I think the wages are... Yeah, Craig can give you the numbers.

- So the wages that we pay young people are depending on the hours and again, if a minimum wage goes up, this will go up but it's usually about $1,250, is how much they can earn in the summer.

Sometimes a little less, some of our programs are four-weeks summer (murmurs).

- So you could imagine that if, if $15 minimum wage is enacted next year or this, I'm sorry, this year, then you could see that going up to somewhere in the $2,000 summer range.

- Yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll grapple with that.

The big part of the model is that we pay the wages, so again, following up on and piggybacking what Dale has said, the model is Y.O.U.

is the employer of record.

So whether they work at CHN or any of the other places that we work with, they, their actual employer is Y.O.U and we subsidize the wage.

And one way that we can really expand the program 'cause in any given year, five to 10 times more young people apply than we have jobs, is to get other people to pay the wage and then Y.O.U.

administrative costs will be covered by other scenarios, such as the Cleveland Foundation.

- So that's a sort of fundraising that Dale was referring to.

A question that, that kind of came up in my mind as Dale was talking about the public private partnership is how much in public dollars is being, is being put into this invested each year, at this point, Craig Dorn?

- It's a, it's enormous amount.

And I should take a moment to thank Cuyahugo County and the City of Cleveland, which are the two public entities that do this.

In a typical year Cuyahoga County, it's 4 million, sometimes it's less and sometimes it's as much as 5 million and the City of Cleveland also contribute close to a million dollars to this.

The answer to the question, how much is public, how much is private, is it's 95 to 97% public and 3% private.

When Y.O.U was founded, it was 50, 50.

- Wow!

That's really significant.

So this is a, there's a soft ask here that I'm hearing for the private sector to step up.

Dale, can you talk a little bit more about how, when you compare summer employment programs around the country, I would imagine there are other areas, other regions where the private sector is more involved.

- Yeah, there, you look at New York and Boston and Detroit and Baltimore, they have really stepped up over the last five to 10 years their private sector, to really support these types of programs.

Boston is a model of how they've been doing it, so we just have to get there, it's not that we can't, granted Cleveland lost a number of, of lead businesses over the years.

So I understand how the change happened, we just have to think about a way to basically reverse that.

And what I tell people is everybody can create a summer job for a young person.

We all are busy as adults, you can, you can find something for that young person to do.

What Cleveland did wonderfully 30 years ago when they created Craig's, Craig's business, Craig's nonprofit, is they solidified the, the expertise in how to create those jobs, how to supervise young people how to train the supervisors that are gonna be working with young people 'cause we know it's not always easy.

They, they concentrated all of that in Craig's organization.

Not everybody has done that in other cities and that's a good thing.

If you are a group that wants to hire 10 young people and you don't know exactly how to do it yourself, you just call Craig's office and they know exactly what to do, by when, with which type of young person.

That's fabulous, we just need to get them more slots.

They know what to do, when to do and how to do it and how to work with those kids who are not easy to work with.

- Pat Kenney, I imagine that bringing an infusion of dozens and dozens of young people every summer, will have an impact on culture in the workplace.

Can you, and, and I would hope a positive impact but I don't wanna make any, I don't wanna guess here.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

- Yeah, sure.

Yes, it absolutely does.

I mean, I think from the very first year that we did this and the teams not really knowing and expecting what, what are the kids are gonna be like and are they gonna have, are they gonna add value or are they gonna take up space?

And just all of those things and as each year we progressed, they, they, we, we, we invested more in that experience.

And the more you invest in that experience, you're both going to get a productive outcome as the, as the business owner and, but then you just see, you see the turnaround in those young adults, you see them picking it up, you see that movement.

So, the culture, you know, it, again, it, it shifted in a very, very positive way and I wanna say the other thing as we started, it was all about CHN's operating departments and just, how do we fit them in.

And in the spirit of trying to say, yeah, that's one piece and it's our company and it's a great exposure for these young adults to, to see the mechanics and how it all works, what about, what about the rest of mainstream America or mainstream Cleveland?

So what we ultimately did was we leveraged our own business partners, people who, 'cause we're a very large $75 million operation doing lots and lots of real estate development and everything, so we went out and leveraged our own relationships with the banks, with the insurance companies, with private companies and businesses that we do business with and we created that opportunity for placement for them.

So we've, we've now really reversed the, the majority, probably 60% of 100 kids a year are actually working through jobs that we developed through our business partners and business relationships and it, and it works incredibly well.

And the other, the other one piece is as that experiment continued, about 1 1/2, two years ago, we started adding in almost a social aspect of saying, how do you create the employment, that internship, that opportunity and do it in a way that brings people together who've never come together, like the police and, and African-American and, and Latino and low-income families in the City of Cleveland.

So we've been working now for years with the Cleveland Division of Police and the Cleveland Police Foundation, where our kids are literally working side-by-side with the officers in three different districts, we had, we had 37 kids at the Cleveland Foundation, just well, pre COVID, we had almost 43 kids working in the real estate, I mean, in the police divisions.

And so what that does is it normalizes relationships, it, it, they get to know each other as individuals and not just either side of a profile, either the child profiling the police of saying what they think and certainly the police profiling the child.

And so it has been one of the biggest successes that we've had and we really wanna commend them for participating and we look forward to huge expansion of that effort.

- Pat Kenney is Chief Operating Officer for CHN Housing Partners and employer that works with Y.O.U., Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Craig Dorn is CEO there and he's our guest today on the Friday Forum, along with Dale Anglin who manages youth development projects and health and human services for the Cleveland Foundation.

You're with "The City Club Friday Forum", we're turning to questions from all of you right now and if you have a question, you can text it to 330-541-5794.

The number again, to text your question is 330-541-5794.

If you're on Twitter, you can tweet it @TheCityClub and we'll work it into the, to the program.

We're talking about summer jobs, we're talking about not just what they are but why they're so important to the development of a, of a healthy and strong community.

Dale Anglin, a question came to me a few days ago from somebody who caught wind that we were gonna be talking about this and have been thinking about it deeply and he asked, he, he sent me some links to coverage of the same topic from 1968.

And he wanted to ask, what's really fundamentally changed?

What's different?

Have we made any progress on this since, since those days, which would have been the kind of Cleveland nowadays in the Stokes administration.

I know that's a deep historical question and maybe, maybe Pat or Craig can, can jump into but then part of the question too made me think that it sort of every year you're gonna have a new crop of 14 year olds, a new generation of 14 year olds who need to be employed.

But has anything fundamentally changed since these sorts of programs began in the 60s?

- Well, the need has not changed, right?

In fact, what we didn't have in the 60s was we had, we had ideas that these types of things would help young people but now we've got definitive research for exactly why job programs, relationship building, where you're building social networks of young people, how it works, literally how their brain develops over time, so we've got a lot more research to show, to confirm basically, what people thought of why this is so important.

In Cleveland frankly, in 1968, this was a booming town.

I mean, you would have had an incredible number of businesses and people and we've just lost population, we've lost businesses and so we've gotta be creative, which is why you probably have less, we have less corporate sector involvement right now but the need for it has not changed at all.

This will never change, let's be clear.

The growth of, kids grow the same every year, let's be clear.

(Dale giggling) So 20 years from now, you're still gonna need summer youth employment.

This isn't one of those issues where you solve it.

This is one of those issues where you keep doing it every year and you just get better at what you're doing so that the next generation of young people, continues to develop in the way we want them to develop.

And I wanna say one other thing, young people make a city, young people, refugees, you need young people so that they'll come back to your city, be your new employers, be your workers and getting them involved in summer youth employment early, helps them see how to build their own city, not destroy it and gets them onto understand what it takes to build a city and gets them connected to that city so that they'll come back and stay in your city going forward and help grow our population.

And isn't that a goal for all of us right now in the Cleveland area?

- Here's another question from city council, from Cleveland City Council, Tony Brancatelli of Ward 12 writes, "I was a summer youth program worker way back in the day", that was his summer job and again, if you're texting your question, tell us what your first summer job was or your favorite summer job.

"Last year, Pat Kenney came to Slavic Village to do cleanups around St. Stan's in our Slavic Village Historic District and I was honored to see firsthand and work side by side with Pat's crews.

I witnessed the pride and work ethic in these young kids and the neighbors were very impressed to see them roll up their sleeves and work on a very hot day.

My question is this Craig Dorn, how has the pandemic impacted the work and how can we expand the program?"

- Yeah, that's really a good question and in a typical year, Y.O.U.

we're serving between three and 4,000 youth last year, we thought it was a miracle that we had 850 young people engage in a summer job, which affected it in a couple of ways.

First of all, one of the ways we've pivoted is we've tried to figure out how summer jobs can be remote.

And so what that meant is a lot more of our summer jobs last year, were atypical and they were more educational.

So young people who were paid to do some get together and especially 'cause there was so much learning loss, there's usually something called summer learning loss and last year, it kicked into the Spring because when, when everything went remote, Cleveland and some of the inner-ring suburbs had much more of a hard time because of the digital divide to get young people engaged in school.

So we did make a lot of our summer jobs last year educational and focused.

This year we anticipate it's gonna be somewhat similar but we also last year and this coming summer are very open to creative ideas, as long as there's the usual things, social distancing, that it's a job that someone can wear a mask.

And so some of the ideas such as the neighborhood cleanup and Slavic Village is definitely a neighborhood we have done so much with, the Slavic Village Development and all the partners there, so neighborhood cleanup is a really great idea and we're always open to any other creative ideas from any neighborhood as long as we're following the COVID safety rules.

- What's your goal for the number of employment, number of, of youth employed this summer?

- This summer our goal is still with by our standards, a modest 1,000.

If we are ready though as Dale indicated, if something changes, we have the infrastructure to turn that into 4,000, if miracles happen and a lot of private sector people hear The City Club Forum and we suddenly have a lot more slots, we will fill them 'cause we will have over 10,000 applicants but our goal this summer is 1,000.

And our goal in 2022 is to get back to three, 4,000 or maybe even more.

- It's, I still, like when you say like, we're gonna try and do 1,000 and we'll have 10,000 applicants, it's a little heartbreaking to think about that, to, to realize how, how great the need is.

Another question, young people have been hardest hit by the pandemic, how should and how is the region prioritizing young adult economic recovery?

Dale Anglin.

- Ooh, boy, I get hard ones.

- [Dan] Yeah, sorry.

- So I think, I think we're all trying to target all sorts of economic recovery, not just for young adults for almost every age.

There is a worry frankly, with the way young people develop.

We have, we have young kids dropping out of college right now because they feel like they've got to go work at McDonald's to help their families, which I understand or they just don't see the benefit of being in school now remotely and they don't do well in that.

So we, we have a lot of work to do to help young people, 16 to 24 come out of this pandemic.

Part of it is gonna be employment, we're talking, we're starting to think through summer 2021 as a, a colleague of mine across the country said, a summer of learning, of healing and of reconnecting.

How do we, whatever young person you're in touch with and it could just be in your neighborhood, you're not employing them but most of us come across young people.

How are we talking to them about what they've been experiencing?

I know adults have PTSD too but frankly, they have it more.

And so how can we work with our school district, work with Y.O.U to provide a lot of opportunities for young people, remote and in person safely but do it in a way that we all almost neighborhood by neighborhood, where we've got something for young people to do, where they feel like we adults see them, that we are trying to help them, we're allowing them to frankly express their frustrations and their worries, so that we can help them on a healthy path.

There, we know as adults, we will get through this pandemic because we have been through hard times before.

It is hard for young people sometimes to see the other side.

We have to help them see that other side and that's through employment, that's through summer-out-of-school-time opportunities, that's through, I know CEO Gordon is thinking about how to do more summer school or things, opportunities this summer but it's an incredible time to support our young people.

We're all, we're all trying to think together, not individually about how to do that.

- Dale Anglin is the program director for youth, health and human services at Cleveland Foundation, as you can tell, we're talking about summer jobs here on "The City Club Friday Forum", if you have a question for our panel, please text it to, text your question and your first summer job to 330-541-5794 or tweet it @TheCityClub.

The phone number again is 330-541-5794.

This is from somebody whose first summer job was as a auto detailer, my brother had that summer job as well and he and the, the audience member writes that "I had a clean car that summer.

Craig Dorn, what job sector does Y.O.U.

need more participation from and who, who else needs to employ teens during the summer?"

- I, that's a really great question.

I do wanna also say one of the things in response to the previous question, the, since young adults and young adults of color are the hardest hit group by usually unemployment and also the pandemic, I wanted to do a call out to the OhioMeansJobs, Young Adult Resource Center, which is right now standing by and so one of the answers to what we're doing is we're trying to help young people through the pandemic and it's been harder to reach them.

So if anyone on this call listening on TV or the radio knows of young adults, 16 to 24, who are struggling, connect them to the OhioMeansJobs, Young Adult Resource Center 'cause we can get them a head start on, on their future.

In terms of industry sectors, my initial reflection would be all of the above as long as they're new, new to Y.O.U and, and like I said, we do a lot with the nonprofit sector so particularly the private sector because young people teams can do so many more jobs than you would think and Pat Kenney's stories really illustrated this how they can work in human resources, they can work in the office, they can work in maintenance.

So there really isn't an industry sector that we're particularly more need of, we were looking for any industry sector where you're open and willing to hire young people while you as an organization has a keen eye on the three main industry sectors of our, of our regional sector partnership initiative which are IT, healthcare and manufacturing.

So I'd certainly call those out but really it's not so much about the industry sector, it's about a willing employer who wants to engage with the program.

- A couple of tactical questions here for you, Craig because I imagine there's a, as Dale pointed out before, we don't have the large employers that we used to and recent news coverage, particularly on NPR that I've noticed is that one of the silver linings of the pandemic is the growth in startups and entrepreneurial activity.

Doing anything, I mean, and when I say startups, I'm not just talking about tech startups but people who have started their own businesses as a, as often out of necessity but they're finding some success.

Do small, do you work with small employers too?

I mean, not everybody's Pat Kenney and can absorb 100 teenagers in a summer.

- Yes, absolutely.

So we've had a partnership with JumpStart that of course connected us, each one of those individuals works with one small business and we'll take, you're willing to hire one person, like Zeigler a manufacturer, they took one person or if you wanna take 100 like Pat Kenney that's okay too.

But yeah, absolutely small businesses, size doesn't matter.

That really goes, speaks to my answer to the other question, it's not about industry sector or size, it's about willingness and this really will help your business as well 'cause the young people will add value and help with your bottom line if you're a private business.

- And another tactical question on the employee side, one in 10 young people will get a job through Y.O.U.

who apply for a job through Y.O.U, how do you decide which one out of the ten?

- So we decide two ways.

A big way we decide is we randomly select.

That is why Case was able to conduct a study that looked almost like a... well, it was a quasi-experimental design because we randomly select the, a lot of the young people.

But we also work with some community partners, particularly through the MyCom Network and so some of those community partners are allowed to select their own young people.

We like to do that because we, we feel that that gives a richer experience and that is actually what Cleveland Housing Network is as a community partner.

So it's a little bit of both but the majority are randomly selected to keep it as fair and equitable as possible.

- And a follow up question to that from somebody whose first, favorite summer job was as a US post, post office mail carrier, a job that I, I always thought might be like at least a nice way to stay outside and not have to be working with a shovel, asks, "Can you explain how you screen the students and employers for compatible match and any training and guidance that is provided to the employer to provide a good experience for both parties?"

And Pat Kenney, I hope you can weigh in on this as well but Craig, why don't you start?

- Sure, so we, the, the training for the youth is they, they attend a several day orientation that focuses both on the logistics 'cause they're becoming employees of Y.O.U.

and some of the basics on navigating transportation and how to deal with things on the job such as conflict, which is a really a biggie.

So for the youth, in terms of training, Y.O.U.

's main summer jobs program, I'm sure, I'm sorry, in terms of screening, Y.O.U.

's big summer job program does not do too much in the way of screening.

We have a smaller internship program that does a very thorough screening, including an essay and an interview but when you're dealing with thousands of applicants, sometimes 15,000 applicants and 4,000 jobs and you have to do this all in two months, there's not a lot of, of screening of the, of the youth.

We do try to match them based on their application, what they've indicated is some of their interests and also we try to keep especially the younger youth close to home.

For the older youth so, we do more screening and as I said we have an internship program and so if employers, especially smaller ones are really interested in a particular skill set, we can gather all that information from the information we have on the youth.

For employers, we will, especially a new employer we will hold your hands through the whole process.

We have a team of three people whose only job is to work with employers who are in our summer jobs and subsidized work experience area.

So you'll attend a training that will give you some general guidance, especially on how to work with teens if you're not comfortable with that, we will also screen you as an employer and we will interview you just to make sure there's a safe environment, especially as a new employer we will...

In the old days we would come out and visit, in COVID we'll figure out some way to just, to make sure it's a, it's a good work environment for the young people.

- Pat Kenney, what kind of training do you think employers need as they prepare to do this?

Because the, obviously the hope here for Craig is that he'll get some phone calls after this program.

- [Patrick] Right, yes, thank you.

For us it's a little different, we spend an extensive amount of time going through a process where as Craig, Craig talked about once they make it through their process, there's an orientation but we will start working this summer's program now and it'll take 3 1/2 months to go through the whole process.

So we'll do our own outreach and marketing to the young adults, we will have them complete an application.

So they're gonna complete an employment application with us, they're gonna attach a resume, we literally interview every single applicants that comes through on CHN's Housing Residents.

And what we'll do is we'll match up those skills.

And so when you got to think about it we have positions that are within our own company, which has a little more flexibility but when you're talking about your banking relationships and your insurance relationships and your long-term corporate, you're gonna make sure that you're going to screen and ensure that that candidate that you're sending over, is really gonna meet the needs of what that employer is looking for.

And in some cases, the employment standards that the corporations have, be it drug testing and background checks, those apply.

So it's different pieces and parts but we will, we will spend extensive time.

And when you get to the resume part, there's a lot of, a lot of young adults, the youngest ones, they've never had it.

So when you take them through that process to complete the application and give a resume and they don't have one, that will begin our youth engagement managers opportunity to work with them for the next five, six months developing those kinds of skills.

So I think, I think the biggest thing is we reach out to our other outside employers, we ask them what their requirements are.

What are they looking for?

What did the kids need to have?

What skill set, what experience and then we make that match so we're, we're moving forward with only quality kids.

- Pat Kenney, I wanna, I wanna just come back to the sort of overarching idea of what you do and why you do it.

And the, you mentioned that you have three full-time youth employment managers and that seems and, and you, you're investing real dollars, real time, this isn't just like a little side hustle that CHN is doing, it's completely integrated into your model.

And I wonder if you can talk about you, you're, you're a real estate business, right?

A non-profit real estate business, real estate concern that is, that is focused on creating value in the properties and the communities where you're doing the work.

And can you just talk about why you see the employment part of this as a key piece to ensuring that you're creating strong communities?

I'm sorry if I answered too much of my own question for you but you, you see, I just want you to kinda pull that apart a little bit.

- It's absolutely part of the fabric of what we do.

So, you know, we are...

In addition to being one of the largest real estate developers and developing, managing, building, owning, selling, thousands of affordable housing, real estate units, we are... we are folks who wanna ensure the true success.

So for, for our families, surviving is not the piece, it's really thriving.

So we're looking for people to thrive, not just survive and so many people get caught up in just the, the surviving.

So engaging the young adults on that level, integrating them into the fabric it's like we're investing.

Any company, I don't care if it's a 500 company, you're gonna invest in human capital and if, and if we, for a moment look at young adults, just like Dale was saying, as we're investing in these young adults as our future.

And you can pay it one way or you can pay it another way but if you're, if you're running your own business, you're investing in your machinery, your infrastructure, your IT, everything and that pays huge dividends.

And these young adults, it's, it's the same thing, as you build, you create those opportunities, you build those relationships and you train them through those processes, they're gonna, they're gonna give you the kind of return that you're looking for.

So it's absolutely ingrained in really everything we do and we have 1 1/2 staff not 3 1/2 but... - [Dan] 1 1/2 , Okay, I'm sorry I misunderstood, thank you for the correction.

- [Patrick] But when we get more money from the show we'll have to add... - Exactly.

Dale Anglin, a very quick question, if private individuals want to provide financial support for a teen job this summer, how do they go about doing that?

- They call Craig.

(Dale giggling) We give all of our, all of our dollars are funneled through Craig's office, through Y.O.U.

but we're, we're thinking about maybe for summer 2021, doing this type of campaign that I was talking about, where maybe we could get philanthropy to pay the administrative costs and people could give toward the wages 'cause I mean, not everybody can pay $2,300 per kid, we understand that.

But even if you can't figure out the dollars, we need the slots.

We need people to think creatively about spaces where young people can go and be productive this summer.

And Craig and his people will help you figure out how to do that, you can talk to other employers who are new, who were reticent in the beginning and then had, did it for a couple of years and go, "Oh, wait a minute, I really like this" but I love what Patrick said, this is an investment in our region's future.

Whether you birthed that child or not, we all should be important, be a part of making sure that our children grow up and become productive adults.

And the only way to do that is for them to do things like summer jobs.

- Craig Dorn, the, your website URL is?

- [Craig] youthopportunities.org, nice and simple and if you go there, you can find a lot of this information, connect with our employer relations team and even register as a, as an employer.

- Which I will be doing later this afternoon.

We have, we have worked with Y.O.U.

in the past and it's fallen away, It's gonna come back, thanks to this program.

So you've got at least one new or one returning employer, Craig.

This question from somebody whose first job was a gas station attendant, that was also one of my early summer jobs, "Biggest change has been moving from a manufacturing to a service region and the digital divide also contributes to a major challenge.

How do we narrow the divide and solve the transportation issues related to jobs outside of mass, the regional of mass transit?"

Anybody.

Dale Anglin.

- Yeah, so two parts, right?

So yes, digital divide alone contributes to this or exacerbates it and the region is working together, the County, the city and probably 6 to 7 different partners, there's a, there's a digital equity coalition that's working to get computers and hotspots and better broadband across the region both short-term and long-term.

So that is happening, it'll take a while but at least people are talking about that.

The transportation issue is a different one and this region chose not to invest in rail a long time ago for all sorts of reasons, we get it and yet we're stuck with what we have now.

And so there's lots of things, we've, we've met with the RTA, it's a problem still in search of a solution frankly but that solution also has to come from state government.

Our State invests something like, literally like 66 cents per person in public transportation, other places invest like $20 per person in public transportation and out of that comes jobs.

So we've got to figure out a way as a State to think and say that, it's not just in our region, it's in the rural places too, where transportation is just a big problem.

We're trying lots of things.

People do vans, we've got church, churches loaning their vans to move people, I know Craig has ways of helping kids figure out bus routes, they figure it out but it is very hard.

- We have time for just a, I don't... We'll try to get to this, this question here, Craig Dorn, somebody writes, "Are there specific initiatives through Y.O.U.

around creating safe spaces and opportunities for trans and queer youth, especially trans and queer youth who are also Black Indigenous or persons of color?"

- So that's, it's interesting.

We definitely have, there's not a specific initiative but Y.O.U., diversity, equity and inclusion is our number one value, we take it very seriously, always have.

And so we, we work, this really goes back to how I said, we hold the hands of the, of all the employers, we also hold the hands of the young people.

This is their first job, they are assigned a job coach, a case manager.

If you work at Pat Kenney's, you have some additional support but most people don't work at Cleveland Housing Network and so Y.O.U staff or job coaches really will help the young people through any of the challenges they have, whether it's because they're dealing with issues you mentioned or whatever the issue might be.

- Craig Dorn is president and CEO of Youth Opportunities Unlimited, you can find them @youthopportunities.org, Dale Anglin is program director for Youth and Health and Human Services at Cleveland Foundation, Pat Kenney, chief operating officer at one of Y.O.U.

's most significant employers in summer jobs, CHN Housing Partners, I wanna thank you guys for so much for joining us for the Friday Forum today, for giving us something to look forward to this year after such a crazy week.

Thank you so much for being a part of the Friday Forum.

- [Craig] Thank you very much.

- [Patrick] Thank you.

- [Dale] Thank you very much.

- [Craig] We appreciate it.

- I wanna thank all of you as well, if, and, and, you're joined by member sponsors and donors and others who support our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive, we cannot do this without you and we are so grateful, you can find out more @cityclub.org.

Next Friday, January 22nd, speaking of the last week, we will have a conversation on the presidential transition during these times.

We'll be joined by Lisa Brown of Georgetown and Chris Lou of the University of Virginia, both of whom have experience with presidential transitions.

In addition to our radio broadcast and live stream by the way, you can catch all your favorite "City Club Forums" in our archives on PBS Passport and also on Roku and Amazon Fire Stick.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, we're gonna get through this, stay strong and stay healthy.

Our forum is adjourned.

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