The State of Older Youth Programming
In our Opportunities Landscape 2021 report, one of our main findings revolved around the lack of older youth programming. In focus groups with older youth, participants told us that they experienced a large decline in the availability of interesting and engaging programming as they got older — echoing our findings that there were four times the number of programming opportunities for elementary-aged children than older youth. In our current analysis, this gap has closed to 2.3 times the number of opportunities.
Since Opportunities Landscape 2021, Baltimore’s Promise has used both the qualitative and quantitative data from the report to advocate for increased programming opportunities for older youth and the centering of community voice and engagement in funding decisions. Below, we highlight two initiatives that used Opportunities Landscape data to enact change: Baltimore Summer Funding Collaborative and Youth Grantmakers initiative.
Summer Funding Collaborative:
Community Review and Funding for Older Youth Programming
The Baltimore Summer Funding Collaborative (SFC) is a partnership between public, private, and nonprofit organizations that supports high-quality summer programs serving children and youth from low-income backgrounds in Baltimore City. While each member of the SFC has unique priorities, all members share one goal: to fund different types of summer programs that keep students engaged and reduce summer learning loss so more Baltimore City youth can reach their full potential.
As the administrative backbone of the SFC, Baltimore’s Promise oversees the application process for programs seeking SFC funding. Part of that application is a Community Review Process, where young people and parents of young people in Baltimore City come together to evaluate program applications. The SFC used Opportunities Landscape 2021 findings to develop application questions and a rubric that community review participants used to help evaluate programs. SFC funders then used feedback and reviews from community members in funding decisions, ensuring community voice played an integral role in the funding cycle.
Baltimore Children and Youth Fund Commits $2 Million in 2022
Motivated by Opportunities Landscape data that revealed the lack of programming for older youth, Baltimore’s Promise advocated to attract more funding for programs serving this age group. In 2022, the SFC welcomed the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF), which committed $2 million in funding for summer programs run by organizations led by people of color and for programs serving older youth ages 14-24. This investment, as well as commitments from other funders, led to a 82% increase in funding granted for programs serving youth aged 14-24 compared to the previous year.
Youth Grantmakers: Empowering Young People to Make Funding Decisions
The Youth Grantmakers (YG) initiative is a permanent, youth-led grantmaking body through which public and private youth-serving resources can flow. This grantmaking structure was developed by older youth from Baltimore City, ages 16-24, who served in the inaugural cohort. The initiative is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.
Baltimore’s Promise serves as the administrative backbone and provides guidance and data support through the grantmaking process. With this guidance and support, the first cohort was empowered to make decisions about how to allocate $525,000 to organizations supporting Baltimore City older youth. The YGs selected this priority population based on their own experiences and data from Opportunities Landscape 2021, which revealed the lack of older youth programming. The YGs determined the grant criteria and expectations, developed the funding application and approval process, selected the first group of grant recipients, and now serve as program officers, working with grantees to identify and implement capacity-building efforts.
The second cohort of Youth Grantmakers began their tenure in summer 2023.
The Current State of Older Youth Programing
The Opportunities Landscape 2023 findings show the gap in programming opportunities between older and younger youth decreased since Opportunities Landscape 2021, in part due to the efforts of the YGs and the SFC.
Our Opportunities Landscape 2023 dataset identified 878 program sites serving 17,482 youth ages 19-24. A deeper dive reveals that most of these program sites and opportunities exist during the summer months. Of the 765 program sites serving older youth where we received time-of-year data, 94% of sites and 70% of opportunities occurred during the summer. For example, 419 program sites that serve older youth are part of Youthworks, which provided 5,101 young people ages 14-21 with a five-week job opportunity during summer 2022.
Expanding programming opportunities for older youth during non-summer months can help reconnect youth to communities and workforce opportunities. U.S. Census data reveals that in 2021, 15.7% of youth ages 16-24 in Baltimore City, including 21.2% of Black or African-American youth, were not in school nor working. This group is also known as Opportunity Youth. Data also reveals that high school graduation does not necessarily lead to further education or employment. According to a Post-Secondary Pathways Report released by Baltimore’s Promise and the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC), 26% of the City Schools graduating class of 2009 did not enroll in college or appear in the Maryland workforce during the fall after graduation.
Programming focused on older youth can help secure and strengthen the pathway from secondary education to career-sustaining wages. Youthworks has recently announced they will expand their job program to fall 2023 and spring 2024 — encouraging news, though the expansion is currently limited to 200 City School students still enrolled in high school.
Grads2Careers: A collaboration between Baltimore’s Promise, City Schools, and the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, Grads2Careers (G2C) provides City School graduates with free job- training programs in high-demand fields, including healthcare, biotechnology, construction, and more. Since its launch in 2018, G2C has served over 500 Baltimore City youth.
Early data on the long-term outcomes of G2C participants is encouraging: Compared to City Schools students who received a college degree within six years of high school graduation, the median annual income was 22% higher for African American male G2C alumni and 33% higher for African American female alumnae.
These percentages are even greater when compared to City Schools students who did not earn a college degree within six years of high school graduation. The G2C team believes more work is needed to further improve program outcomes and expand opportunities to more youth. But current G2C data demonstrates that investment in programming for older youth can materially improve outcomes for young people.
