Kevin Hart (left), Miguel Weinstein (center), and another CYC intern (right) at a CYC Capitol Event in Sacramento

Meet Miguel

In April, Supervisor Chan's office hosted an extern through California Youth Connection's Bay Area Leadership Academy, Miguel Weinstein.  Miguel's project focused on tying financial capability programs in with employment for system-involved youth.  ALL IN staff sat down with Miguel and asked him to share some insights he has gained from his project.

Miguel aged out of foster care in Monterey County, and now lives and works in Alameda County.  He got connected to CYC thanks to a recommendation from his social worker, and enjoys having a network of former foster youth he can relate to.  Drawing from personal experience, and his own struggles managing his finances in his young adulthood, Miguel developed a survey to determine the financial knowledge of system-involved (foster and juvenile justice) youth in Alameda County.  This survey asks youth questions meant to determine their financial literacy, as well as their current financial situations, such as "do you know your credit score?" "do you have a credit card?" and "are you currently in debt?" His target is 50 surveys, and at the time of this newsletter's publication, he had received 40 responses from youth all over the state.

We asked Miguel what was the most surprising thing he learned from his survey, and he said very few of the system-involved youth who responded are working.  While there was not a section on the survey to ask respondents why they were unemployed, Miguel hypothesizes there may be barriers to access either from group home rules and restrictions or from a lack of training and opportunities for skill building. 

Miguel hopes the findings from his project will help inform both financial capability programs and youth employment programs of the need to work together to help system-involved youth build financial stability. 

Miguel would also like to share with the ALL IN community that system-involved youth are hard workers, and because they have had to work harder for stability in their lives, they can be a great resource of untapped potential.  

Thank you for your great work, Miguel!

In This Issue:

• Focus On: Financial Capability for System-Involved Youth
• Meet Miguel: An Interview with Supervisor Chan's extern from California Youth Connection's Bay Area Leadership Academy 
• Stuff to Do, Stuff to Read

Focus on: Financial Capability for System-Involved Youth

In March, many of the issues Miguel is exploring through his survey were addressed at the quarterly stakeholder meeting for AC-CAN, a group of partners working to build wealth in vulnerable communities.  The meeting focused on integrating youth financial capability and financial services into youth employment programs with the goals of 1) providing a forum for youth employment and financial services programs to connect, 2) discussing how to integrate these programs in the future, and 3) joining together to collect data on how many youth in employment programs are accessing financial products and financial capability programs.

Read and Watch

• American Innovation Can Narrow the Opportunity Gap for Kids article on Huffington Post
• States Tackle 'Aging Out' of Foster Care by the Pew Charitable Trusts
• ALL IN Alameda County's Quarterly Report is now available online.  Click here to read the report.

Photo credit: Lucy Nicholson, Reuters

Congratulations to our living wage advocacy partners! 

On April 4, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB3 into law, which will raise the statewide minimum wage to $15/hr by 2022.

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