IMPROVING EFFECTIVENESS OF SUMMER YOUTH JOBS PROGRAMS THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Two important goals of youth jobs programs are to expand youth's opportunities for future employment and to keep youth out of trouble by engaging them in productive summertime activities. However, many youth jobs programs struggle to fully engage participants, resulting in low attendance--neither keeping youth off the streets nor imparting them with important job skills. Inclusion of social emotional learning (SEL) in youth jobs programs provides an important opportunity to improve engagement and overall effectiveness of the jobs program. This paper is presented to assist organizations in developing, refining and expanding their youth jobs programs to incorporate social emotional learning. This paper will provide a discussion of what SEL is with an emphasis on how these skills and attributes are relevant to job and career success. This paper will discuss how a focus on SEL in a youth jobs program not only builds these important skills for program participants, but can help with youth engagement and motivation in the program. Specific strategies will be shared for incorporating SEL skill development into youth jobs programming.