A force for change: YouthForce program encourages workforce development
Elijah Barlow was 14 years old when he decided that he would be a construction manager when he grew up.
“I loved playing with Lego. And I would do things with pipe cleaners, twisting them into trinkets and birds. And so it’s always been in the back of my head: do you want to do that (as a career)?” Barlow said. “So now we’re at construction.”
There was just one problem though. Barlow is homeschooled, and he didn’t know much about getting a job. Lacking the connections needed to begin a career, Barlow was lost on where to begin. That’s why, when his father heard about a program for teens about to begin work, he decided to go.
The program was YouthForce, an extension of the Boys and Girls Club of Athens. Founded in 2022, the YouthForce Innovation Hub aims to connect with area youth and get them into the workforce, according to program coordinator Dee Cooper.
“We do workforce development, partnering with career inspiration, the intersection of those two basically equates to giving young adults skills and an avenue towards meaningful employment and career development,” Cooper said.
YouthForce also endeavors to curb dangerous and reckless behavior by replacing it with career development, according to John Ford, another program coordinator.
“If I can impact a youth in a positive way, that’s someone I know who’s not going to go into our community and bring it down,” Ford said.
YouthForce accomplishes these goals through the Innovation Hub, their main base of operations. Situated in a storefront at the Georgia Square Mall, the Innovation Hub Offers a variety of tools to aid in career exploration. Several stations line the walls of the Innovation Hub, containing everything from painting canvases to robots. The Innovation Hub also features several VR helmets, which can simulate a day in the life of over 27 careers.
YouthForce is split into 2 distinct courses, separated by age. One program, designed for early high school and middle school students, meets after school and is taught by instructors who are professionals in various fields.
The other program, designed for late high school students and graduates, is called Future Force Ready. Future Force Ready pays students $10 an hour to take courses in financial literacy and career readiness. After 60 hours of courses, students graduate into the workforce. YouthForce has partnerships with several area employers, including Piedmont health and Caterpillar. Manufacturing and healthcare are some of the most common career pursuits for Future Force Ready graduates, according to Cooper.
Future Force Ready focuses on building soft skills that might be needed to get and maintain a job. Barlow, who is a member of Future Force Ready, believes that this exposure is a precursor to the real world.
“Today, we’re doing (mock) job interviews, and that’s really putting things into perspective. So it’s kind of dipping your feet into the cold water before you actually get hit with the shock of a splash later,” Barlow said.
Foothills High graduate Teryone Campbell is applying the skills he learns in YouthForce to the job he already has.
“When they talked about dressing for success, like wearing the right attire when it comes to preparing for anything, I really took that into consideration,” Campbell said.
Future Force Ready also sends students on field trips to different workplaces around Athens to expose them to different career types.
“We got to tour the main building for the Athens Police Department. We all learned what it was like to be a cadet and work with the Athens police,” Barlow said.
Future Force Ready holds sessions Monday through Friday and runs from 12 p.m to 3 p.m. On an average day, students begin with lessons in local politics and general civics.
“They’ll pull up some statistics on the TV, and they’ll tell us about how the funds are running through Athens, how much money it takes to run Athens, or what districts there are,” Barlow said.
To assist in this goal, Future Force Ready invites some government officials to YouthForce. Naomi Barlow, Elijah Barlow’s sister, believes that these connections will prove helpful as she enters the workforce.
“Yesterday we had two district managers come into this program. Learning all these things and being able to meet important people like that so you can get ahead in life has been very impactful,” Naomi Barlow said.
Next, students learn about financial literacy in their day to day lives. Naomi Barlow appreciates the free education YouthForce is providing her, which she says would be hard to find elsewhere.
“It’s helped me figure out budgeting and a lot of things that I would have never have thought about for when I go out (into the workforce) in a few years or a few months,” Naomi Barlow said. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort to have to look up financial literacy by yourself and here’s this program that can teach you for free.”
The Innovation Hub was founded in 2022 by Life LaRoche, a social work professor at the University of Georgia, and Sterling Gardner, vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of Athens. Gardner and LaRoche noticed that engagement with the Boys and Girls club began to dwindle as participants aged. They also saw that many Athens area employers were struggling to find employees. Combining these two needs, the idea for the Innovation Hub was born. Gardner, who graduated from Cedar Shoals in 1981, wanted the Innovation Hub to be more than a “certificate program”.
“We don’t want kids to go away from here and they get a nice, little shiny certificate that says ‘I completed the course.’ Our goal is always to make sure that every young person who comes through these doors that wants to be employed has the ability to get a job,” Gardner said.
Much of the funding for the Innovation Hub comes from Zaxby’s founder and Chairman Zack McLeroy.
“We originally approached him about a $100,000 gift to support our workforce development initiatives. After long discussions and him giving us his vision, he actually pledged a gift of a million dollars over five years, which is $200,000 a year,” Gardner said.
Much of McLeroy’s money went into the initial design for the Innovation Hub, most of which LaRoche designed. LaRoche got input from students and employers while designing the space, and ultimately decided to prioritize hands-on experiences.
“We wanted this space to be more than just helping people build resumes. We wanted to have robotics. We wanted computer tech. We wanted virtual reality. We wanted public speaking and debates and all these other things,” LaRoche said.
One of the primary motivations behind YouthForce is to alleviate the disparities between different racial and class groups here in Athens.
Hannah Sexton, a UGA social work student who interns at YouthForce, believes that the university only exacerbates the problems that marginalized groups face.
“I think a lot of students come into UGA, mostly white, upper class students, and then they end up staying here and then raising the rent for communities that were already here. Then they (the communities) get pushed out of the area because rent is rising,” Sexton said.
Ford sees misdirection and aimlessness when he looks at today’s Black male youth. Popular culture, he says, points Black men into a small set of largely unachievable career paths. When these paths don’t pan out, many Black men don’t know where to go next.
“If I line up 10 African American males and ask what their dream job is guaranteed, nine out of ten of them are gonna say ‘football, basketball, rap’. I just feel they haven’t been exposed to any other careers,” Ford said.
Cooper, also Cedar Shoals alumni, sees YouthForce as a way to point these teens in the right direction.
“I identify with youth here in Athens. I understand the challenges that we face. And I look at YouthForce as kind of like an engine or mechanism for change, something that can catapult our young people into a higher level of success,” Cooper said.
YouthForce has several ambitious goals for itself going forward. Gardner is expecting an improvement to the Innovation Hub along with the Georgia Square Malls’ upcoming renovation, and is looking into expanding into other cities. They are also looking at doing some YouthForce courses at local schools, according to Cooper.
“You know, everybody can’t get here. So sometimes we got to meet y’all where y’all at.” Cooper said.
When he began YouthForce, Elijah Barlow only had a vision for his future. But now, with his experiences at YouthForce, he feels ready for anything.
“Before (Youthforce) I would have been sitting somewhere at home not really wanting to do much. Now I’m like, ‘I need to get out there.’ And it’s not even ‘oh I need to get out there and get money.’ It’s ‘what do I want my future to be like?’” Barlow said.
