Helping youth achieve early career milestones this summer

Enrolling 1,300 young people in their summer internship programs, Roads to Success has been giving youths a headstart to their professional careers for over 20 years. 

Partnering with employers at over 180 locations, Roads to Success places interns into meaningful positions, working with students during the school year to plan for college applications and careers. Largely serving an underserved cohort, most of Roads to Success’ enrollees and families rely on Medicaid and SNAP benefits, with the nonprofit actively gearing up for anticipated changes from the latest budget reconciliation bill. While workforce needs have yet to react to anticipated tariffs, the nonprofit’s summer opportunities for undocumented youth were trimmed, with further cuts anticipated in the coming months.  

Despite this uncertainty, the nonprofit remains a mainstay for summer opportunities for underprivileged youth – bridging resource gaps and helping young people thrive. 

Led by CEO Sheila Duke, a veteran in the early childhood and youth space, Duke’s early start mirrored a version of the Roads to Success model: having started as a summer preschool tutor at 14. From there, Duke continued enhancing youth and family programs at New York Edge, Union Settlement and most recently at the Fresh Air Fund. 

As the nonprofit weathers through anticipated federal cuts, New York Nonprofit Media caught up with Duke to learn more about Roads to Success’ resiliency plan and its impact on the students and families they serve. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

How are you faring with all the instability this summer? Has Roads to Success been impacted by cuts to federal funding? 
We are literally taking it one day at a time. Through all of the different uncertainties that are happening right now, we are trying to create stability in ways we know we can manage. That's why advocacy is so important, because we ultimately don't know what some of these impacts will mean for our programs. Right now, we have not seen any major cuts, however, a lot of the funding around workforce development is slated to be impacted, as well as some of our Department of Education programs that we operate. 

Among the students you serve, I'm sure many have been impacted by a lot of federal changes, especially with the anticipated changes from the budget reconciliation bill. How are they feeling?
So a lot of our staff also follow those demographics. We employ a huge part-time staff base, and we had to eliminate a lot of roles this summer. From a parent perspective, a lot of them have the uncertainties of how they can make ends meet. With all the cuts slated, they don't know if they'll get their SNAP benefits, have Medicaid or rental assistance. So a lot of them are asking us questions that we don't necessarily know all the answers to yet. We're aligning ourselves with a lot of advocacy groups to push for policy and restoration for things we lost or are slated to lose. We employ over 150 people, and 75% of our workforce will probably be impacted either directly or indirectly. So I'm quite sure that there will be some uncertainty that we will have to work through with even our employers. 

Do you offer any help to make those basic needs met, whether it be like food or transportation costs? Are those included in the programs that you offer?
So we partner a lot with different food banks. We have it at our community school. We have a benefits coordinator that helps families align with the additional support they need. 

In speaking to parents of students enrolled in your programs, what are they most anxious about? 
There's a lot of anxiety. I feel that once we’re able to synthesize all the things that are coming along with this mega bill, we’ll have some listening sessions for families. Because they don't know. Some of them are unaware of what they should be challenging, what they should expect and or what help they'll need, if some of these things actually get eliminated. I think we have to do some community group work, so that parents can actually know some of the fine print within the bill. 

Regarding funding for Summer Youth Employment – I know funding was a bit on the rocks last year, but most of it seems to have been restored. What's it been like navigating through that and running summer youth employment programs this summer? 
We were able to successfully launch our summer youth employment programs for the ages of 14 to 24 which focuses on career exploration and paid work experiences. Last year we had additional programs that were eliminated this summer and those programs really focused around our undocumented young people. A lot of that work now has been eliminated, which is unfortunate, because many of those young people needed the work in order to fill gaps in households and learn skills and trades. 
 

What kind of internships are young people being placed in?
So there's a real range. It can be from legal to media to retail to social services, hospitality, finance, sometimes arts and culture. It can be youth programs, education programs. We try to have a variety of workforce internships, so that they can then choose something that aligns with their career trajectory. We have the Department of Youth and Community Development, we have their summer youth employment, SYP, and then we have Learn and Earn, which is a year-long program that also has a summer component, where the internship is tied to the learning throughout the year. They have to go through courses that help them with a resume, networking, college essays, and some credit bearing classes for college. Then they do the internship at the end. This program follows them for three years. So the hope is that we're following them through their last years of high school and then their first year post graduation.

And is that the model you deploy at Roads to Success? 
This is the model that we do. And that's why it fits so uniquely with what we do, because we want a young person at every milestone to be able to continue their path, to allow every young person to have an equitable pathway to success. In order to do that, we have to meet them at all in development milestones so that we can appropriately assist and support them as they go into adulthood.

Do internships change from year to year?
It depends on student interest and our ability to locate organizations that are willing to take on interns. Sometimes it's a tough time finding work sites that will give a young person a meaningful experience. Most lucrative internships are lottery based and or merit based on grades. This is really not like that. So we have to find work sites that are willing to take interns that have the capacity to actually give them a meaningful experience. 

Has demand increased this year? 
We do see the influx of young people wanting to apply because while it's their first job experience, it does add to the household income and so it helps families. We love that young people want to work, but we just want to make sure that it's meaningful, that we're teaching them the art of budgeting and saving while also being able to contribute to the household.

What are young people most worried about right now?
Young people are just worried about the basics: food on the table, being able to commute freely without anxiety or worry. I feel like kids should not have to worry about those things. They should want to be kids and be socially, emotionally aware of all the things that they have to endure in life, and have fun. I remember when summer used to be so fun. But now it really has changed for some young people who have to help their families.

What are you most excited about this summer? 
There are so many exciting things happening! I was most excited about our ninth annual Success Summit that happened in July, where we took more than 1,000 young people and did a day-long conference with them, with workshops, keynote speakers and exhibits. It was colleges and careers, but we had people from all different types of professions come and speak about their pathway overcoming triumphs and trials. Every year, hearing some of the questions that the students ask, hearing the panelists pour into these young people about their lives is always very heartwarming. Young people need to be surrounded by constant reminders that things won't always be easy, but your zip code does not dictate the circumstances and where you will end up in life.