Providing Motivational Skills Training to Low-Income Youth I. TOPIC The Success Connection II. LOCATION Yakima Valley, Washington III. SUBJECT Providing Motivational Skills Training to Low-Income Youth IV. SUMMARY The Yakima Valley Opportunities Industrialization Center, a community action agency, formed a partnership with Central Washington University and the Student Leadership Conference of the Washington State Migrant Education Program to address the needs of low-income, migrant youth in Yakima Valley, Washington. The partners received a Demonstration Partnership Project grant of $350,000 to implement The Success Connection, a program in which 120 mostly Latino youths between the ages of 17 and 22 participate in high motivational activities, a four-week university program, and belong to a support group over the course of the two-year program. The Success Connection has two objectives: (1) within two years of entering the program, a minimum of 80 participants will be employed at a wage above the poverty level and/or will have achieved a significant educational goal; and (2) within two years of entering the program, these 80 participants will experience less unemployment than 80 non-participants, who will be monitored as a control group. By the end of their participation in the Success Connection, 94 percent of participants had graduated from high school, compared with 78 percent of the control group, 47 participants went on to college or a career training program, and only one participant has received public assistance, versus 11 in the control group. Participants also improved their school attendance, reduced their disciplinary problems, and demonstrated the ability to set and achieve personal goals. V. SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE Created a partnership and developed a program to help at-risk, migrant youth improve their employability and opportunities for self-sufficiency through education, motivational activities, peer support groups, and family involvement. VI. CONTACT Henry Beauchamp, Executive Director Amelia Garza, Project Director Yakima Valley Opportunities Industrialization Center (A Community Action Agency) 815 Fruitvale Boulevard Yakima, Washington 98902-1922 509-248-6751 509-575-0482 (FAX) VII. CASE STUDY The Problem: Yakima Valley in central Washington is a primarily agricultural region that requires great numbers of migrant farmworkers each year. Most of the labor force, both migrant and resident, are Latino. They have low skill levels, earn entry level wages, and work in seasonal jobs all of which makes them at-risk in terms of income, health, and educational needs. The high school graduation rate for migrant teenagers in Washington in 1985 was 11 percent. Yakima Valley has the lowest per capita income in Washington, and the five towns targeted for this project had poverty rates from 35 percent to 65 percent of the population. The children of low-income families in Yakima Valley especially Latino and Native Americans find it difficult to break out of this lifestyle because of generally low expectations for their performance in school and the work place. Families often work together for economic survival, and children are involved with harvesting and other field work by the time they are teenagers. With few alternative role models available to them, young people frequently drop out of school as early as the eighth grade. Alternatives to agricultural work are few, and college is not considered a real option. The Approach Adopted: The Yakima Valley Opportunities Industrialization Center (YVOIC), a community action agency, formed a partnership with Central Washington University (CWU) and the Student Leadership Conference (SLC) of the Washington State Migrant Education Program to address the needs of low-income youth in Yakima Valley. The partners established three principals as the basis of their collaboration: (1) the most effective and long-lasting approach to ending poverty is to empower those in need; (2) creating an understanding of and access to existing service structures is a key to self-sufficiency; and (3) public and nonprofit organizations can jointly affect poverty issues without massive injections of social service dollars. How They Implemented The Approach: The partners developed a program, The Success Connection, in which 120 mostly Latino youths between the ages of 17 and 22 would participate in high motivational activities, experience an intensive four-week university program, and be part of a peer support group over the course of the two-year program. The Success Connection had two objectives: (1) within two years of entering the program, a minimum of 80 participants will be employed at a wage above the poverty level and/or will have achieved a significant educational goal; and (2) within two years of entering the program, these 80 participants will experience less unemployment than 80 non-participants, who will be monitored as a control group. Each of the three partners had extensive experience in addressing the needs of the target population. YVOIC came into being in 1971 in response to an urgent community need to provide education and job training opportunities to Yakima Valley's minority and low-income populations. YVOIC developed basic education and skill training programs with special emphases on self-esteem, self-awareness, ethnic heritage and pride, English, spelling, and consumer education. For 20 years YVOIC has developed education, training, and other self-sufficiency programs for low-income youth and adults and has become the largest community-based service delivery program in Washington. SLC, established in 1986, helps high-risk youths between the ages of 16 and 20 examine their life and career goals and establish educationally oriented strategies to meet their goals. The SLC program is centered around a four-day seminar during which participants develop peer support groups and relationships with mentors. SLC's intensive program of goal setting, problem solving, and team building in non-academic settings helped migrant teenagers who participated in the program improve their high school graduation rate to 70 percent over a nine-year period. CWU's efforts to meet the needs of special populations include the Educational Opportunities Program, the Minority Recruitment and Retention Program, the Higher Education for Learning Disabled Students Project, the College Assistance Migrant Program, and an Academic Skills Center. In 1991, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Community Services awarded the Success Connection a $350,000 Demonstration Partnership Project (DPP) grant to get the program started. Additional resources totaling more than $100,000 came from matching funds and in-kind contributions from the project partners. Nine high schools from throughout the valley nominated a total of 227 students to participate in The Success Connection. Nominated students possessed at least two of the project's pre-determined at-risk characteristics, which include having left school before graduation, currently unemployed, employed at a wage below the minimum wage, a ward of the courts, AFDC-qualified or on other public assistance, and at-risk according to teachers or school counselors. Approximately 60 percent of the 227 students were of Latino origin, 14 percent were Native American, and the balance were white/European Americans. From this group, 107 were selected at random to receive services, and the remaining 120 students would serve as the comparison group. The Success Connection partners built on SLC's format of intensive challenge-type events and adventure-based counseling to offer an 18-month program of motivation and support set in a school context but clearly seen as an alternative to traditional classroom instruction. They added small group sessions in homes and at school facilities to the more intensive challenge-type experiences of the SLC model to add continuity and ensure that individual participants' needs were being met. The four major elements of The Success Connection are: (1) peer support groups of eight to 12 students to foster an environment that encourages risk-taking and a shared vision; (2) family involvement to gain parental understanding and support for non-traditional aspirations; (3) student leadership to build confidence and commitment through participation and success in challenging events; and (4) university experience to demonstrate the feasibility of post-secondary education. These elements are conducted in such a way so as to maximize student interaction with each other and reinforce a growing sense of life's possibilities. In the peer support groups, participants help each other overcome the barriers that prevent them from realizing their dreams. Each session typically includes some energizer activities, various kinds of group involvement, and a group evaluation of the experience. The Family Vision Quest, conducted early in the program in the security of the home, is a shared experience of harmonizing the dreams of youths with the expectations of their parents. The family is a strong and important aspect of Latino culture, and the project partners knew that youths would not be able to embark on education-based careers without the support of their parents. Adventure-based counseling events take place three times during the course of the program. Popular challenges include the minefield, a trust-building exercise in which a blind-folded individual is guided through an obstacle course by a "seeing" partner, and a bridge-building exercise designed to enhance awareness of group dynamics, problem solving, and leadership styles. The summer university experience, The Success Connection's culminating event, is a two-week introduction to higher education, complete with two weeks of life in dormitories, exposure to classroom teaching, and a one-day visit from parents. This experience is designed to enable participants to see themselves in college acquiring many of the skills and credentials necessary to achieve the dreams that had taken shape during the previous year. Results: By the end of their participation in The Success Connection, 94 percent of participants had graduated from high school, compared with a 78 percent graduation rate for the control group; 47 participants went on to college or a career training program. Only one participant has received public assistance, versus 11 in the control group. The project had other, less tangible, results, too. Success Connection staff regularly received feedback from school teachers and counselors, parents, and the participants themselves that the program was having a transforming effect on the lives of the youths involved. These effects were noted in improved school attendance, reduced disciplinary problems, and anecdotal evidence that participants were increasingly reaching for personal goals. VIII. KEY WORDS At-Risk Youth Community Action Agency Demonstration Partnership Project Department of Health and Human Services Families Farmworkers Latino Americans Migrant Farmworkers Migrant Teenagers Native Americans Office of Community Services Partnerships Self-Sufficiency Teenagers Unemployment Youth ref: yakima.L4doc