Giving Youth a Seat at the Table
Shelby County and the City of Memphis, Tennessee wanted to improve how they re-engage young people who aren’t in school or working. So they hired a dozen community-based researchers.
By Jeremy Gantz
Governments create programs to address clear and urgent needs — but sometimes uptake disappoints because services aren’t as accessible as they could be. In the last few years leaders in the City of Memphis and the surrounding Shelby County government have been rethinking how they engage “opportunity youth”: the approximately 30,000 residents in the region aged 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor working. A majority of these youth experiencing disconnection are Black.
“We’re not short of programs for opportunity youth, but for some reason these programs are not at capacity,” says Janet Lo, Deputy Administrator of Community Partnerships for Shelby County government. “Clearly there’s a misunderstanding about who these young people are — what they need, how they want to be treated, and how they want to communicate.”
Improving services to put more youth on track to earn education credentials, develop career-ready skills and obtain living-wage jobs ties directly to city and county economic mobility and crime reduction goals. Beyond the value of transformed lives and self-empowerment, the potential financial impact of more effective programs is high. Youth experiencing disconnection in the Memphis metropolitan area represent an annual tax burden of more than $400 million, a report from the nonprofit Seeding Success found.
To better understand the needs of opportunity youth and redesign services, Shelby County tried something new. Mindful that young people would be more likely to be open and honest about their needs and preferences with peers, the county launched its first youth participatory action research (YPAR) effort. It’s supported by the Opportunity Accelerator (OA), a collaborative initiative led by Results for America that helps governments promote economic mobility and reduce racial disparities. The City of Memphis is receiving concurrent technical support for its youth reconnection services, including service improvements to its new Opportunity R3 program based on community findings.
The core idea of YPAR is simple but powerful: train young people to conduct research that will help improve their lives and the government agencies that serve them.
“It’s often difficult for young people experiencing trauma and grief to navigate support systems set up for them,” says Auriel Rolle-Polk, associate program director at Code for America, an OA collaborative organization. “It’s also true that often individuals can engage their own community deeper than a government can.”
A Learning Process
The YPAR project is the first time a government in the region has committed to paying young people as community-based researchers. A total of 12 researchers aged between 18 and 25 were hired (at $25 per hour) by three local nonprofit organizations that have partnered with Shelby County. (The organizations are Beyond Educating Foundation, RESPECT the Haven CDC and The Collective Blueprint.) Everyone hired has had similar lived experiences to the youth the project aims to understand and engage. After receiving training in community research methods — such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, observations and surveys — the researchers began working in October. Empowered to be in the driver’s seat, they’re trying to meet peers where they are, places like barber shops and community events.
This is not standard government operating procedure. It’s a learning process for everyone involved: the hired youth, the community-based nonprofits that supervise them, and the county government. It’s important to check your assumptions and get out of your comfort zone, Lo says. “It’s so easy, but also dangerous, to assume you have accurate data. I’ve had to sit back and trust that the youth are going to know which questions to ask.”
The YPAR project, overseen by leaders of the Shelby County Nonprofit Committee, has multiple goals. Most immediately, it aims to engage 300 opportunity youth and community members to capture insights about how employment- and education-related support services such as childcare, GED programs and career training could be better-suited, coordinated and delivered. In May, after working 180 hours, researchers will report their findings.
While working in focus communities, researchers are also sharing information about existing programs and services, helping peers take steps to move their lives forward. More broadly, the project is building the capacity of organizations to conduct their own future YPAR studies; the county made a deliberate choice to contract with local nonprofits, Lo says.
Another result of the project will be a YPAR “blueprint” report, Rolle-Polk says, gathering lessons learned about how to train people to become experts in community engagement work that can be tough for governments to pull off. Shelby County’s YPAR experience could inspire similar work relative to other government services in the area — and perhaps even other jurisdictions around the country.
“At the OA, we know government is a critical actor meeting community needs,” says Jennifer Park, executive director of OA. “We also know that every community knows what it needs better than anyone else. That’s why we’re supporting our government partners in learning how to center and uplift community voices — to make sure government builds the services that truly support the wellbeing of youth and families.”
Proving Impact
Redesigning and implementing more effective services for youth is one thing, but proving impact is another. Doing so is much easier with reliable tracking systems that capture and report out data detailing the scope and value of services delivered.
That’s why, concurrent with the YPAR project, OA is also providing technical assistance to Memphis’ Opportunity R3 (OR3) program to better track participants and outcomes. The four-week OR3 program offers 16- to 24-year-olds a pathway specialist to design a personalized career or education plan. Plans can include soft skills training, workplace training, and/or pursuing a GED or high-school diploma. Through this technical assistance, many OR3 alumni became part of the YPAR project, emphasizing not only the connection of these two projects, but also the dedication of these young people to their community.
“It’s about getting these young people back on track,” says Tamika Williams, a program manager within the City of Memphis’ Office of Community Affairs (OCA), which runs OR3. “We’re focused on long-term, progressively paying careers — not a job people might leave within three or six weeks because they don’t like it.”
This past summer, the OR3 team began piloting a new digital platform that takes the place of cumbersome paper processes, Excel sheets and mass emails, she says. The new platform allows staff to centrally track and more easily connect with all program participants across 12-month periods, making it easier to alert people to new work opportunities and keep tabs on post-OR3 trajectories.
The technical support is crucial because future funding isn’t assured. OR3 was launched in 2022 using federal American Rescue Plan Act aid dollars allocated through 2025. “We’re not a line item in the city budget,” Williams says. “We need to be able to measure and show success after three years to secure sustained funding.”
If the technical pilot is successful, the City of Memphis plans on expanding the platform to support other OCA programs as well as its Office of Youth Services programs. The hope is that all youth-related programs can be in sync, giving full visibility into all the city services an individual uses, and their impact.
“We need the left hand to be talking to the right hand,” Williams says. “When systems and teams start talking to each other more, we’ll better understand exactly when a person stopped out or how they succeeded.”
Collaborating for Change at Scale
This strategy — strengthened data-sharing and communication to drive program improvements — is also coming to life through the Memphis-Shelby County Opportunity Youth Steering Committee. Featuring leaders from both governments, the committee meets monthly to share learnings about the YPAR and OR3 projects, connecting the two workstreams.
Ultimately, all this work is about addressing youth disconnection by increasing access to employment and education opportunities for young Black Memphians. To promote economic mobility at scale, the city and county will collaborate to co-design a more coordinated and accessible system of re-engagement pathways.
A crucial first step is understanding exactly what young people are looking for and the obstacles they face. As Rolle-Polk puts it, referring to the YPAR project, “sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.”
That idea has required a shift in mindset for some of the experienced leaders in the county and city. “We wanted to just do the work — but this is the work,” Lo says. “For me, success means that the organizations are open to what comes out of the youth-led research, that we’re all willing to change the way we do things.”
The Opportunity Accelerator is a collaborative initiative — led by Results for America and in collaboration with the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, Code for America, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, and the W. Haywood Burns Institute — that supports government in promoting economic mobility, reducing racial disparities, and improving the wellbeing of their residents. The Opportunity Accelerator was funded by Blue Meridian Partners from July 2020 to December 2023.
Editor’s note: On Wednesday, November 29, 2023, the OA’s Memphis team lost one of its beloved YPAR youth researchers, Nicholas (Nick) Bess, to gun violence. Nick joined the OA’s Memphis team as a researcher for the YPAR project in October 2023. Throughout every shared space, Nick’s brilliance, authenticity and love for his community radiated through him and into this work. Although no longer with us physically, Nick’s heart, energy and legacy continue to guide and inspire these projects and far beyond. Nick’s dedication to his community shone through his commitment to representing his peers and ensuring the needs of his community are centered in systems that impact them. The YPAR team, the City of Memphis and the Opportunity Accelerator are committed to honoring Nick’s legacy and continuing his work.
The Nicholas Dean Bess Memorial Scholarship, proposed in memory of Nicholas Dean Bess, aims to honor his legacy and support young individuals who are passionate about pursuing technical certifications. This scholarship, provided by the Beyond Educating Foundation, serves as a testament to Nicholas’s enduring legacy of kindness, leadership and commitment to community service.
We invite you to join us in perpetuating Nicholas’s memory and legacy through your support. Any contribution, no matter the size, will make a significant impact and help us continue Nicholas’s mission of making the world a better place. Your monetary donation can be made online.
Application for the scholarship will open on April 1, 2024. Your kindness and generosity will leave a lasting legacy that honors Nicholas’s spirit and positively impacts the lives of others.
