Youth advancement through social capital and skill-building

Youth economic advancement

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Regardless of what pundits express about the economy, the reality is that young people are challenged with breaking into different industries, including the youth work and nonprofit sectors. Oftentimes living-wage, entry level roles are not truly entry-level. Employers are looking for relevant experience. Passionate young people with transferable skills are being overlooked for these well-paid roles. Changeist participants have stated, “Jobs want experience, but when do we get experience if we can’t get a job?”
Additionally, higher education comes with the promise of immediate economic advancement, however, a college degree doesn’t always equate to instant job opportunities and simultaneously leaves graduates saddled with student debt. There need to be more opportunities for apprenticeship – hands-on experience that’s not 100% voluntary. Changeist offers two apprenticeship opportunities for youth ages 18-26, setting youth up to be competitive for entry-level roles.

Changeist brings together youth ages 18-26 for full-time and part-time apprenticeships, paving the way for youth to take on equitable pay in good positions post-Changeist. Part-time: 45 18-26 year olds participate in Changeist’s Team Leader program as near-peer mentors to a team of 10-12 middle or high school youth over 22 Saturdays. From November to July, participants serve 150+ hours in training and service. They go through a 3-Day/24-hour Changeist leadership academy, co-created by UCLA Center for Community Engagement, and receive additional training sessions throughout the 8 months, including a mid-year retreat to discuss skills, reflect on data, and improve practice. Training includes Changeist Organizational Culture, Youth Development, Engaging Youth in Meaningful Conversation, Reflection Practices, and Data Analysis. After completion of the program, Team Leaders receive a $1,000 honoraria.
Full-time: 15 AmeriCorps Fellows, ages 18-26, serve 1700 hours over 10.5 months, receiving a bi-weekly living allowance of $1,375. Fellows learn to design, implement and improve spaces for youth to practice change-making skills. In addition to the training part-time participants receive, Fellows gain experience in: Recruiting middle and high school youth; Leading volunteers; Cultivating relationships with schools and CBOs; Designing workshops around complex community issues. After completion of the program, Fellows receive a $10,000 award for qualifying education expenses.

Changeist works best at scale - large cohorts, many communities and ideas, more people in service addressing our largest challenges, reconnecting and gaining real skills after one of our toughest periods in history. We see Changeist as a multi-state organization by 2029. To get there, we start with reaching pre-pandemic levels of youth participation in our current markets (Los Angeles and Stockton) in 2024-2025, and start to expand our programming to the valley in 2026-27. We provide opportunities that allow 18-26 year olds to stay in Los Angeles because they are being paid while getting tooled-up to advance their careers. Changeist is committed to offering compensation that allows people to feel good about the choice they made to do youth work in a non-profit setting. We promote from within, when possible, ensuring we too are contributing to the success of post-Changeist participants. Currently everyone on our staff team, aside from the founders, are Changeist alumni.

We invested early in understanding our true impact as an organization. In our second year we brought on a full-time director of impact who was completing a PhD in evaluation and positive youth development, specifically with youth in marginalized communities.
We conduct pre- and post-program participant surveys to understand outcomes. We utilize focus groups, program observations, and listening sessions. We implement a mobile experience survey via text messaging to understand program quality in real time, based on youth feedback. We have a clear understanding that participating in Changeist has significant benefits for youth as related to personal empowerment. That said, we have not yet had the capacity to understand longitudinal data. We are looking to work on an alumni study – understanding what alumni are doing now and how they continue to view their Changeist experience.