DYCD Commissioner Bill Chong discusses Summer Youth Employment Program

For more than 50 years New York City has been offering a Summer Youth Employment Program, giving millions of teenagers and young adults their first job.

New York City Department of Youth and Community Development Commissioner Bill Chong, whose department has run the program for more than a decade, recently spoke with City & State about the program, which offers tens of thousands of New York City residents from the ages of 14 to 24 a six-week experience from early July to mid-August. The program has work sites across the five boroughs, and most of the jobs are with city agencies, but increasingly private companies have become more involved.

This year a former program participant, Daymond John, the founder of FUBU and a star of the TV show Shark Tank, is helping DYCD promote the program. He has cut public service ads to encourage youth to apply.

“It turned out, [John’s] very first job was in the SYEP in the Parks Department in Queens in the 1980s, and he tells us that everything he learned about being a successful businessperson he learned from his first job,” Chong said. “And that is the kind of testimonial we want employers to hear because there is some hesitancy sometimes from employers to hire young people, a high school young person and to tell them there are so many people who have gone onto great success.”

Chong also spoke about his own personal experience in the program and how it helped him realize he wanted to pursue a career in public service.

The program receives more than 100,000 applications each year, so there is a lottery system in place to make sure there is no preferential treatment. The program also targets certain neighborhoods by locating the work programs in areas with the highest unemployment. The program also sets aside roughly 2,000 job placements for homeless youths, young adults in foster care and other vulnerable teens. These placements are outside the regular lottery system.

Those interested in applying for the Summer Youth Employment Program can go to the city’s website.