Volunteers of America offers youth offenders second chances and more: Pathways to Peace

Programs run by the Volunteers of America and Ohio Means Jobs|Cleveland-Cuyahoga County focus on employment, not only as a workforce issue, but also as a way to keep young people out of trouble and lower youth violence. Such programs have the research to back them up. An analysis done for The Plain Dealer by Case Western Reserve University shows a correlation between the youth idle rate, based on teens who are neither in school nor working, and youth violence.

Some local programs see youth employment as more than just a workforce development issue. They also view jobs as a way to offer stability to young people, especially those from Cleveland area communities with high violence rates. The research bears them out. These are the voices of some of the voices speaking in favor of more jobs and less violence.

A program in Baltimore bring youths together with volunteer second “families” to help guide them through turbulent times.

There is a certain population of youth aged 16-24 that are neither in school nor working because of some derailment (oftentimes burdensome responsibilities) along the way. A national organization called Nxt Level helps people get back on track with their goals through a specialized team that helps an individual with things like getting a GED, mental health or legal resources, job training, and food programs. They even work with local businesses to give the kids a chance and hire them upon their completion of the program. Nxt Level now has centers in Baltimore, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and more.

Many previously incarcerated people struggle to both rehabilitate and gain the necessary skills for a successful post-prison life. This article looks at Hope Hall, a halfway house using a comprehensive approach meant to address underlying issues of incarceration as well as prepare participants for future employment.

Different states have demanded welfare recipients to work and report their logged hours to a welfare counselor, but this practice can make welfare recipients feel more like a statistic than real people. Ramsey County, Minnesota, has addressed a new way of offering job assistance—by developing skills for job retention, further education, and work planning with the counselors.

Nonprofits Manufacturing Renaissance and Youth Crossroads provide vocational training that Chicago's public schools have largely abandoned, particularly in disinvested communities. Manufacturing Renaissance runs free seven-week metalworking cohorts that include stipends, tools, job placement support, and an alumni network, and has trained more than 1,200 young adults since 1982. Youth Crossroads offers multiple workforce tracks, including HVAC certification and paid internships, and 88% of trade program graduates report feeling prepared to enter the workforce.

California is shifting to expand programs that help give incarcerated people the skills and knowledge they need to effectively transition back into society. Various re-entry programs for men and women across the state that connect people with education and job resources helped dropped recidivism rates from 44.6% to 41.9%, based on the state’s most recent data, and also cost taxpayers less than the average cost of incarceration.

Transfr is a tech company that provides free virtual reality job training and education to help facilitate employment opportunities. Transfr specifically focuses on providing these opportunities for disadvantaged people in places like domestic violence shelters, mental health clinics, juvenile detention centers and state correctional institutions where access to skill-building and further education is often hard to access. So far Transfr has 30 partnerships across 18 states.

The Sebastian Indian Social Projects (SISP) works with socio-economically disadvantaged communities, providing social services like healthcare and employment assistance with a primary focus on educating youth. SISP has focused on educating the local female population, which has helped empower them economically and led to several women receiving jobs outside of their village. SISP has also educated several students who were forced to drop out of traditional school and provides supplementary activities along with their standard education, such as skating and coding clubs.