Education

Education – obtaining at least a high-school diploma – is essential for workplace success. Today even entry-level jobs require a HS diploma, but in many systems only 50% of inner-city youth who start grade 9 actually obtain a HS diploma.

While many teens need to improve academically, the real barriers are overwhelmingly non-academic: poverty, violence, drugs, abuse, and low expectations. Y.O.U. programs help teens develop the skills, the resilience and persistence to stay and succeed in school.

When huge barriers related to poverty are addressed, our teens prove to have a great capacity for academic and career success.

ELEMENTS OF Y.O.U. COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAMS

Jobs for Ohio's Graduates (JOG)

JOG is the local affiliate of a national Best Practice, Jobs for America's Graduates, and has served this region since 1980. Locally and nationally, this program achieves its two big goals: youth at greatest risk of failing will instead graduate from HS, and they will make a successful transition to young adulthood.

JOG is delivered in-school, at the invitation of the school district and the school. The school identifies the youth at greatest risk and enrolls them for JOG, a 1-credit elective class held daily. It is taught by a Y.O.U. Career Coach stationed full-time at that school.

Classes are kept small for maximum individual attention. At other times during the school day, the JOG Career Coach provides one-on-one mentoring and coaching. Graduates receive follow-up services for 1 year after graduation.

Currently JOG is offered at East Tech, Glenville, John Adams, and JF Kennedy (all in Cleveland Metropolitan School District). Many schools want to offer JOG or, if they have it, expand it to more students, if funding were available to Y.O.U. JOG is funded in part by United Way of Greater Cleveland.

Jobs Unlimited Mentoring Program (JUMP)

An after-school program, JUMP includes a strong anti-drug focus as part of its comprehensive programming and its focus on HS graduation. A Y.O.U. Career Coach is stationed full-time at each participating school, delivering the program after school. Special workshops on prevention are also given at the request of teachers during in-school classes.

Y.O.U. began JUMP at Shaw HS in East Cleveland, with funding from government agencies; it currently receives funding from the Workforce Investment Act.

JUMP represents an enduring commitment to East Cleveland and to serving youth over a period of several years in order to achieve maximum outcomes. This past year, for example, JUMP at Shaw had a high percentage of seniors, many of whom had been in the program for two or more years, and 97% of the seniors successfully graduated.

In 2010 JUMP expanded to Lincoln-West HS, on Cleveland's near west side, in partnership with Scranton Road Ministries where 37 youth deemed most at risk of dropping out of school were provided services. The program successfully graduated 18 youth.

This year, JUMP expanded to Euclid HS, Glenville HS, John Adams HS and MC2 STEM.