California’s Youth Job Corps offers a second chance at career, higher education

One of Kaelyn Carter’s ongoing challenges these days is working early hours as a landscaper through the cold, often rainy San Francisco Bay Area weather — a world away from the stagnation he remembers feeling when he first arrived in California less than two years ago.

Then, Carter had just been released from prison after three years of incarceration in Virginia, where he was born. He had made his way to California, which he heard might have more job opportunities.

He’d tried working, but he’d run into more trouble and once again had a warrant out for his arrest. So he turned himself in.

That decision led to significant changes in his life, he said, because his probation officer connected him with his current workplace, which is part job and part rehabilitation program.

The job is with Rubicon Landscape Group, a landscaping company in the city of Richmond that has multiple branches, including a Reentry Success Center which offers a structured 18-week vocational training program where young adults under age 30 who’ve been impacted by the justice system learn about horticulture and landscaping.

Working at Rubicon, Carter said, offered him a community and the means to provide for himself and rebuild his life.

“It feels comfortable to be able to provide, to buy stuff that you need, (like) hygiene products. You don’t have to go and ask someone to do it for you. You can just go and get it yourself,” he said, and “being able to go to work every day and see a check or some kind of payment at the end of the week, it’s comfortable.”

The program is part of a larger state effort led by California Volunteers, called the #CaliforniansForAll Youth Jobs Corps, that provides employment opportunities for Californians ages 16 to 30.

Job placements for service members range from a few months to about a year, a timeline that’s set by each participating city or county depending on the region’s needs. The idea is to create a pathway to careers that may have been previously out of reach for them.

Priority consideration is offered to youth who are in, or transitioning from, foster care, or have been justice system-involved, or in the mental health or substance abuse system. Participants must also be low-income, unemployed and not enrolled in school. They must also not have participated in an AmeriCorps program.

Out of over 8,000 total service members to date, about 400 were either in foster care or transitioning out of it, and 702 have identified as justice-involved.

The #CaliforniansForAll project includes other service programs, such as College Corps, which in its first year included 3,250 students from 46 California community colleges and state universities.

While the Youth Job Corps prioritizes young people who may not be on a college track, it encourages them to pursue higher education.

“That’s a goal of the program, and it’s why we focused on those populations,” said Josh Fryday, chief service officer of California Volunteers. “The idea here is creating an opportunity for our young people to serve their community, to make a difference, stabilize them, and then get them on the path to a successful career, which we hope higher education is part of for many of them.”

Service members are paid at least the state hourly minimum wage, now $16, but their city or county of residence can increase their wages.

The corps launched in 2022 with $185 million in state funding, with $78.1 million in ongoing funding approved in the 2023-24 state budget.

Since then, about 8,000 young people have worked in nearly 30 cities and counties that applied to join the list of participating locations, which range from Nevada County to the city of South Gate in Los Angeles County to the city of San Bernardino and more in between.

Each location either hires the service member directly or works with local community-based organizations that provide connections to careers in city government, climate efforts such as fire mitigation, community beautification by way of landscaping, and more.

“We really wanted to provide a lot of flexibility for local communities to decide how they were going to engage young people, depending on the needs of the community and what was appropriate for that area,” said Fryday.

For example, most of the service members in the Los Angeles County city of Maywood were high school seniors or in their early college years, and one was a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

These participants were given the flexibility to choose placement in a career they were interested in pursuing. Their interests ranged from working at City Hall — which is where the college graduate was placed — to the local YMCA. Even some neighboring cities benefited from this flexibility: a service member worked at a technology center in the next-door city of Bell, which is not on the list of participating locations.

Maywood, one of the most densely populated cities in the state, is home to a predominantly low-income and immigrant population that most often commutes to work in other regions of Los Angeles County. But at the end of their Youth Job Corps service time, many of the city’s service members were offered full-time jobs in their community.

“The pay is helpful, the exposure they appreciate, but what I hear that, just to me, is so incredible and inspiring is when they say, ‘I just never thought I had something positive to contribute to my community. I never thought that I had something of value where I could give back, and I could lift up the community I love while also supporting my family at the same time,’” Fryday said. “I remember hearing that specifically in Maywood.”

It’s a sentiment also shared by Carter in Richmond.

“It might sound crazy, but Rubicon has been basically a safe haven for me because it helped me with dealing with … I want to say poverty, if that makes sense,” said Carter, now 29.
His job also helps him address his depression. Rubicon’s wraparound services — such as mental health support, resume workshops — help with housing and transportation, and working with plants helps him feel more grounded, Carter said.

All Youth Job Corps service members at Carter’s job with Rubicon are justice-impacted, which has given him a community of others with similar life experiences.

“This cohort, they just really lean on each other a lot,” said Ebony Richardson, a reentry coach with Rubicon. “I feel like they look out for each other as a whole, and it shows in the work they are doing.”

This community and support is part of what has kept Carter working at Rubicon, rather than returning to the life that led to his incarceration.

“It helped me build structure as far as my character, as far as my work skills,” he said. “It’s really a rehabilitation program basically for those who need a second chance.”