Jobless Youth Get Summer Lift - Chicago News Cooperative

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by KAREN ANN CULLOTTA | Jul 8, 2011

It’s creeping toward a sultry 90 degrees on Chicago’s South Side, where the mix of heat, humidity and joblessness can weigh on teens like 19-year-old Marcus Cammon. But on Tuesday afternoon, Marcus wasn’t worried about all that has he busily mended the battered bones of an old Schwinn 10-speed bicycle.

“I’ve revived the bike with a wheel adjustment and a new seat,” said Marcus, one of 140 novice mechanics at Blackstone Bicycle Works, a youth program in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood that aims to keep kids off the streets this summer by teaching them skills ranging from repairing a flat tire to working on a team and helping customers.

Last summer, 26 percent of American teens aged 16 to 19 were employed, down from 45 percent who had summer jobs in 2000, said Joseph McLaughlin, senior research associate at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. He said he expects this summer’s rate will be similar to last year’s.

Programs like Blackstone’s serve those who face the hardest time finding jobs – black teens from low-income families. For example, 15 percent of black teens were employed in the summer of 2010, McLaughlin said, while 32 percent of white teens had summer jobs. His research shows that teens from families with a household income less than $20,000 are those most likely to be unemployed. On the contrary, teens from households earning between $75,000 to $125,000 a year have the greatest success in finding summer jobs.

“It is counterintuitive to what you might think – the teens who need the jobs the most have the lowest employment rates,” he said. “It’s not a matter of these kids not having a desire to work, but there’s no easy access to getting to jobs outside their community. And some kids are uncomfortable about traveling across neighborhoods because of the gangs.”

Only 14,000 teens out of 50,000 applicants were hired for this summer’s Youth Ready Chicago program, according to the city’s department of family and support services.

Marcus, the youngest of 10 children, said the Blackstone program offers a chance to learn new skills, perhaps earn a bit of cash and savor a quiet environment away from the tumult of a home life plagued by poverty on the city’s West Side. An accidental bicycle mechanic – Marcus is studying ballet and dreams of becoming a dancer – he catches an 8:30 train each morning, arriving at Blackstone at 10 a.m., just after breakfast is served outdoors on folding tables beneath a shady canopy.

Blackstone serves food because some children from low-income families lose regular meals once school is out. “One of the things we discovered when we started the summer program was that many of the kids were arriving without eating breakfast, and they had no food for lunch, either,” said Connie Spreen, co-founder and executive director of The Experimental Station, a non-profit community organization which, in addition to Blackstone Bicycle Works, offers cultural arts, environmental programs, and the 61st Street Farmers Market.

“Somehow, these kids were trying to get through the day without eating, so we knew we had to do something,” said Spreen. “Within the first week, we saw a real difference in their behavior patterns. They were no longer irritable, and they had energy and focus.”

According to a spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the non-profit counts 250,000 children amongst its 678,000 clients, with the summer months being particularly perilous for those from low-income families.

Summer nutrition is just one facet of Blackstone’s mission, and participants are also immersed in projects like Earn-a-Bike, which awards children ages 9 – 16 who work 25 hours in the shop with a refurbished bicycle plus a new helmet and lock. Teens with more advanced mechanical skills become paid members of the staff.

“I was working at McDonald’s by the time I was 15, but the kids can’t even get hired there these days,” said Ty Juan Edwards, Blackstone’s youth mentor. Without some structure in their lives, he said, idle youths “start doing silly, dumb things, like standing outside in the streets with the gangs, and the gang members will always find something for them to do.”

Sydnee Blackwell, 32, said she is delighted that this summer her three daughters, Sharmaine, 13, Amina, 11, and Diamond, 10, can hop on their bikes each morning and pedal eight blocks to Blackstone, where they spend the day honing their mechanical skills and enjoying their new friends.

Above all, the summer program has given Blackwell peace of mind, knowing her girls are safely off the streets and building new skills and confidence, too.

“When the girls leave at the end of the day, someone from Blackstone always calls me to let me know they are on their bikes, and should be home in five minutes,” Blackwell said. “And their boy cousins and uncles are getting a real kick out of the fact that the girls can show them how to fix their bikes.”

via chicagonewscoop.org

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