How Community-Based Organizations Can Learn about the Needs and Strengths of Disconnected Young People: Hudson Guild of New York City's Youth Survey Effort

In Fall 2007, Hudson Guild -- a settlement house that provides services to hundreds of adults, teens and children in two housing developments in New York City -- embarked on a study to assess the needs of youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who were residing in the community and were disconnected (i.e., those youth who were not in school or not working) or at risk of becoming disconnected. The goal of the effort was twofold: to locate and engage these young people in the community who were not being served and to gather information that would help Hudson Guild create programs that would best meet their needs.This brief, commissioned by JobsFirst NYC, describes the process Hudson Guild employed and includes an appendix that provides the survey in its entirety and a companion decision-making tool that can be utilized by other organizations interested in undertaking a similar effort

Disconnected Young People in New York City: Crisis and Opportunity

Commissioned by JobsFirstNYC, this report examines what is known about New York City's disconnected youth -- 16 to 24 year-olds who are not working and not in school. The report explores the roots of disconnection and identifies five priority populations of young people who are at high risk of becoming disconnected. It presents information about specific areas of the city with high concentrations of disconnected young people and summarizes a number of promising strategies for reclaiming this important human resource

Mentoring Formerly Incarcerated Adults: Insights from the Ready4Work Reentry Initiative

This report explores mentoring as a tool for supporting the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals within the context of a larger reentry strategy -- in this case, the Ready4Workmodel. Ready4Work was a three-year national demonstration designed to address the needs of the growing ex-prisoner population and to test the capacity of community- and faith-based organizations to meet those needs. This report describes Ready4Work's mentoring component; it examines the extent to which mentoring was attractive to participants, the types of adults who volunteered to serve as mentors and how receipt of mentoring was related to participants' outcomes, including program retention, job placement, and recidivism. While this research was not designed to assess the precise impact of mentoring on formerly incarcerated adults, it provides a first look at how mentoring, or supportive relationships more broadly, can fit into comprehensive reentry efforts