From Homeless to Helping the Homeless

This year as part of the One City Summer Initiative the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. (the Trust) employed over 20 Young Adult Coordinators (YACs) as part of its target area strategy. These YACs were deployed throughout communities across the District to work directly with residents old and young to better connect them to the resources being offered by various District agencies. DCAYA was fortunate enough to get two of the YACs to blog about their experience this summer. The following post is from Kadeem Swenson who worked as a YAC at the DC General Shelter. 

This summer I had the amazing opportunity to be a community leader with the Children Youth Investment Trust Corporation . My placement as a Young Adult Coordinator with the Trust was at DC General Shelter. My job there was to provide resources to the community and let them know that there are people out there who want to help them. A lot of people in DC don’t know this.

In my situation I was a homeless youth so helping them really meant something to me. I was the only YAC assigned to DC General so, an average day for me was a lot of running around. A lot of people at DC General had lost all hope and hit rock bottom. For some of them, success meant getting all you could from the government or making money doing something illegal. That’s why I worked really hard this summer to make sure the people at DC General had all the resources I could offer them.

While I was at the shelter, I talked to families (both parents and kids) about college and how they could prepare for it. A lot of families did not know much about this. I also worked with organizations such as UDC, DC Public Library, Georgetown Medical Bus and the Department of Homeland Security to come and do outreach and assist shelter residents with completing resumes and applications for jobs. I know the people at DC General needed all the help they could get, but I hope my work there really helped out. I really enjoyed my summer at DC General and am proud to be the first person in the position. Hopefully my work there made a pathway for the next person that tries to help out.

Kadeem is currently in New York at Brooklyn College studying International Business. He really enjoyed working with the Trust this past summer and will continue helping people and promoting positive change in his local communities. Click here to watch a video about Kadeem created by the non-profit College Bound. 

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.  

Connecting Communities to Opportunities

This year as part of the One City Summer Initiative the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp. (the Trust) employed over 20 Young Adult Coordinators (YACs) as part of its target area strategy. These YACs were deployed throughout communities across the District to work directly with residents old and young to better connect them to the resources being offered by various District agencies. DCAYA was fortunate enough to get two of the YACs to blog about their experience this summer. The following post is from Yorman Amador.

Working as a Young Adult Coordinator for the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corps led me to view DC in a different light. For a long time, I was under the impression there were extremely limited resources available to DC residents, which was why many people I know live in conditions that could be described as unproductive. After working for the Trust, I realized the DC government offers a wide range of resources, but there is a large disconnect between people in need and access to the resources they need. Luckily, my position with the Trust gave me the opportunity to bridge that gap in the Washington Highlands community.

As a Young Adult Coordinator, I built relationships with the candy lady, mothers, men, and more than anything, the kids in the area. The kids especially looked up to me because they never experienced a young person in their community providing positive guidance. I wanted to help people use all the resources at their disposal to meet community needs, whether it was information about jobs or programs at the local library. Most of the time, people asked about jobs and childcare services in order to pick up extra work hours. There was also a great demand for mental health services. It was a summer of great memories and I was blessed to work with many young boys, who referred to me as their "father." Initially, this was awkward but I came to appreciate their form of flattery, as it was a sign that I accomplished my goal for the summer by making a difference in these boys’ lives.

I know that my job as a Young Adult Coordinator was important because there was not a day that went by when members of that community did not remind me that my last day was coming up. People loved having us in the community but they wanted the program to be extended to provide stability to the services and programs we introduced. I hope that in the near future, community based organizations and larger non-profits incorporate youth in reaching out to communities about their services year round. From my experience, this is the best way to reach people who could benefit from the services that the DC government offers.

Yorman Amador worked for the Child in Youth Investment Trust Corp as a Young Adult Coordinator during the summer of 2013. DCAYA would like to thank Yorman for sharing his experience and insights with the DCAYA membership as we work together to build a Youth-Friendly City. 

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.  

Feeding Our Capital's Youth One Summer Meal at a Time

Every year during these last few weeks of the summer break, DCAYA likes to take a look back on the summer and how well our government agency partners executed their summer programming. Today we’ll be focusing on the Office of the State Superintendent for Education’s (OSSE) summer meals program which historically has the top summer meals utilization rates in the nation.

If you’ve been paying any attention this summer, you have heard at least something about the Free Summer Meals Program. OSSE’s Department of Wellness and Nutrition Services administers the program's federal extension of the free and reduced price school lunch program and reimburses organizations that provide meals during the summer to children from low-income areas or to individuals with disabilities.

According to OSSE 

“the DC Free Summer Meals Program was created as a safeguard for children in under-served low-income areas to ensure continued access to good nutrition during long school vacations when access to school provided breakfast and lunch meals are unavailable. The health and wellbeing of children in the District is important, therefore access to nutritious meals should not end when school is out.” 

We couldn’t agree more with this statement especially given that nationwide low-income families say they spend an average of $300 more per month on food when kids are out of school.

Summer meals are an open access service in the District which means any young person under 18 can drop-in and get the nutrition they need at a number of sites across the city. There is no proof of income eligibility required, which makes this an especially youth-friendly resource for our city’s young people. As a result many children and youth who take part in summer school, parks and recreation activities and camps and even the Summer Youth Employment Program utilize this service and the District is better for it.

Last year the summer meals program served 26,000 daily meals to children and youth. While this number is impressive, what our friends at DC Hunger Solutions found in their analysis this Spring, was that we’ve actually been experiencing a decline in use from previous years. It was this finding that led to the decision by OSSE to extend the free summer meal program to Saturdays for the remainder of the summer in an effort to expand the reach of the program and ensure that DC’s children and youth have consistent access to nutritious meals.  This shift, combined with the diligent work of the One City Summer Initiative and the outreach that organizations, agencies and concerned community members undertook to get the word out about free summer meals this year, will (we are hopeful) have a measurable impact on youth access to this program for this year and be the first step toward fixing the decline we experienced last year.

At the same time, all stakeholders acknowledge that there is more to be done to maintain high use of this program. Yet, to get there, we need better information on what led to the decline in use of the summer meals program, and some tangible interventions that can be fully implemented for next year. To that end, DCAYA and DC Hunger Solutions are collaborating on a short issue brief (to be released late Summer or early Fall) that explores the causes for this decline, examines the impact of this decline on youth development and presents some solutions to ensure DC remains a leader in ensuring children and youth have access to healthy and nutritious meals.  With that in mind, as you wrap up your summer program and before the crush of fall hits, if you have any suggestions, feedback or thoughts on how we can continue to spread the word about summer meals, remove barriers to access or support expansions of this program please don’t hesitate to share them.  

Anne Abbott is the policy analyst at DC Alliance of Youth Advocates. Her favorite summer meal as a kid was the traditional PB&J, on special occasions she'd add in a banana. To contact her with suggestions for the summer meals program you can email her at anne@dc-aya.org. 

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.