The beginning

STL Youth Jobs is the collective brainchild of a diverse group of funders, individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and civic leaders, including the City of St. Louis Mayor’s office, the St. Louis Community Foundation, MERS Goodwill, the Incarnate Word Foundation, the St. Louis Youth Violence Prevention Taskforce, and a host of other stakeholders. This committed group began convening in 2012 to discuss major issues around the future of our region’s workforce and our youth, and determined that a creative, cross-sector solution must be launched.

Best Practices

We researched best practices in youth employment programs throughout the country, identified a broader group of stakeholders who were willing to invest in a pilot program, and launched our first initiative in the summer of 2013. The program was hugely successful and revealed two important things: First, the demand was huge. With almost no marketing, 1,000 youth applied for jobs. Second, our community saw the value in this initiative. We raised enough funding to employ 200 youth.

National Models

Below is a list of national research-based programs that STL Youth Jobs researched/consulted to build our youth employment system:
Boston Youth Fund
Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Cleveland)
Youth Job Center (Chicago)
Youth Development Commission (Detroit)
Step Up Achieve (Minneapolis)

We hired an external evaluator to help us understand the impact of our work and doubled the program in 2014 to employ 400 youth, with exponential growth each year.

In January 2020, STL Youth Jobs transitioned from being a component fund that was fiscally sponsored by the St. Louis Community Foundation to its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. This allowed us to increase fundraising efforts for future organization growth.

With each new year, we are exploring more strategic methods to enhance our long-term impact and identifying partners who have a shared value for investing in the future of our workforce. Today, we serve over 800 youth and have expanded service areas and ages.

We truly believe in the power of youth employment to transform a number of indicators that dramatically affect the future of our region.

We are actively seeking corporate partners, employers, and other interested organizations and individuals that share a passion for the future economic prosperity of our region. Contact us if you’d like to have a conversation.