Life with Gracie: Giving young people a hand up

Just as the latest crop of young adults was graduating last month from Year Up, Damian De Avila was entering an internship at Equifax doing quality assurance.

It was a huge moment for the 24-year-old, one he wouldn’t have even thought possible just a year ago.

But for nearly two decades, Year Up has been doing just that, making what seemed impossible possible. More precisely, in just 12 months, it helps disadvantaged young men and women like De Avila plug into the job market and thus move from poverty to professional careers. Literally. All they need is a high school diploma or GED, an interest in a technology career and the motivation to be successful in a Fortune 500 company.

The nonprofit was founded in 2000 by social entrepreneur and Harvard grad Gerald Chertavian, who started his career on Wall Street before building a technology firm that he and his partners sold for $83 million.

Chertavian was a college freshman when he began volunteering as a mentor and Big Brother to low-income youths.

Although impressed by the ambition and talents of the young people he got to know, it was clear to him that a lack of opportunity and exposure to professionals kept them from reaching their full potential.

Since its first days in Boston, Year Up has expanded to 16 cities and served more than 13,000 young adults. Nationally, about 75 percent of its students complete the program, and within four months, 85 percent of graduates are either enrolled full time in college or have secured a job.

In Atlanta, where the program first opened its doors nine years ago, the outcome is tracking even better, said Raquel Hackley, director of operations and people development here: Ninety percent of graduates have full-time jobs or are enrolled in college; and the average starting wage is $17.21 an hour and $36,000 a year.

In a ninth-floor office in Midtown last week, De Avila, who came to this country as a child from Mexico, cried as he shared how in just six months, Year Up had changed his life and restored his belief in the American dream.

He said he was devastated to learn his status as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals student put limits on his future. It didn't matter that he had lived most of his life in Sandy Springs and graduated from Independence High School. Unless he could afford to pay out of pocket, college was out of his reach.

“You grow up thinking if you just work hard, you can have the American dream,” he said. “But at the end of the day, that wasn’t the case. It was like being a bird in a golden cage because I didn’t have the freedom to do the things birds outside the cage could do.”

As I said, Year Up changed that.

The program opened here in 2007 soon after Cecil Conlee, a fellow Harvard grad and real estate investor, and three other local businessmen heard about Chertavian’s efforts in other cities and set up a conference call to find out more.

“I’d been involved with many nonprofits, and this was one of the most professionally organized and managed I’d seen,” Conlee said.

More than that, he said, it involves employers in the design of its programs to make sure training matches the market demand. And students get extensive support from counselors and, where necessary, social workers.

Together they put up the seed money needed to secure corporate office space, and 12 months later, Year Up Atlanta opened its doors.

Twenty-four students from across metro Atlanta came that first year. That number has since grown to 290 students a year with some 800 alumni, including a class of 98 who graduated in July.

It was an easy sell, Hackley said. Under the program, students complete a six-month training program followed by a six-month internship with one of its corporate partners, Fortune 500 and 1000 companies such as Equifax, AT&T, Career Builder and Cox Enterprises. They can also earn up to $150 a week during the classroom phase, then up to $200 during the internships.

“It’s the best of business and social services put together,” she said. “It’s a smart business model, so we’re not a handout. We’re a hand up.”

And it gets better. This fall, Year Up Atlanta plans to launch its first Professional Training Corps in partnership with Gwinnett Technical College and enroll its first cohort of 40 students. And by 2018, the PTC will grow incrementally to serve 160 students annually. This growth rate will position the PTC to be self-sustained through internship revenue, with zero reliance on foundation grants for ongoing program support.

“Launching the PTC model allows us to scale up our program and make a greater impact to serve the thousands of disconnected youth in the greater Atlanta region,” said Dakira Watkins, director of student services.

In a world where ZIP codes too often determine people’s destiny and where some inequality is unavoidable, that’s huge.