With the start of the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) now just a few weeks away, the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is gearing up for its second year of SYEP Pride. First announced by Mayor Eric Adams in his 2023 State of the City address, SYEP Pride offers SYEP participants who identify as LGBTQ+ opportunities for unique career exploration programming and special events throughout the six weeks of the program. In its inaugural summer, 3,500 SYEP participants opted into SYEP Pride.
The objective of SYEP Pride is to support LGBTQ+ youth and young adults in overcoming the homophobia and transphobia still all too common in many workplaces. Sharing DYCD’s commitment to helping all young people to thrive as their full and authentic selves at work, employers at more than 1,100 work sites signed on in 2023 to be part of the effort. Employers who have hosted SYEP Pride interns or career exploration events include Disney, The Stonewall Inn, Related, Playbill, ABC News 7, LGBT+ VC, Simon & Schuster, and the New Amsterdam Theatre, among many others.
Jackson Block, CEO of SYEP Pride partnering employer LGBT+ VC, praises the program’s “incredible enrichment opportunities for LGBTQIA+ youth.” His organization, founded in 2022, seeks to close the LGBTQ investment and wealth gap by supporting the education, inclusion, and participation of LGBTQ individuals and communities. Block adds, “We take immense pride in partnering with this program [and] contributing to the professional development and prosperity of our future leaders.”
DYCD and its contracted SYEP providers work with employer partners to offer career exploration events, professional development workshops, networking activities, and related opportunities. Through these events, LGBTQ+ youth can more fully understand career pathways within and across a variety of industries, leveraging the resources of employer partners who support participants with mentorship and skill-building activities.
Response from participants following last year’s program was overwhelmingly positive.
- 84 percent of SYEP Pride youth surveyed agreed that mentors and staff at SYEP Pride workplaces were approachable and sensitive to needs.
- 86 percent of survey respondents reported that the program’s LGBTQ+ career exploration opportunities were beneficial, including 76 percent who found them to be “very” or “extremely” beneficial.
- Finally, 84 percent of surveyed participants requested that DYCD expand SYEP Pride programming in future years.
For this year, DYCD has worked with its contracted providers and employers to expand pre-program trainings in partnership with the NYC Unity Project and the Commission on Human Rights. DYCD has made a number of resources available to SYEP Pride providers and worksites, including “Work it, NYC,” an employer guide to creating and sustaining LGBTQ+ inclusive workplaces; and a project-based learning plan that was first used last year to support 14- and 15-year olds in SYEP. The agency projects that even more youth participants and employers will be part of SYEP Pride in summer 2024.