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April 28, 2022
To Mayor Edward Gainey, City of Pittsburgh
From: Rick Flanagan
Email: Rickflanagan2010@gmail.com Cell: 412-913-4360
I greatly appreciate your focus on teenage violence. I am writing this letter to express my concern on one of your best tools to having a peaceful summer is in trouble. With your leadership the path forward could become very positive.
I have had the opportunity to talk with some Community and Organizational leaders about the numbers of youth that are applying for your summer jobs program. My sense of things is that the numbers of applicants are down from last year. Remembering that last year's numbers were down from previous years because of the pandemic. You may want to request a detailed report from the lead agency who you have entrusted with the management of the summer program-----Partner4Work. I would recommend you gain specific data on the youth applicant pool coming out of neighborhoods like Homewood, Hill District, and Garfield.
Our City really needs for you take control of the situation and move towards having hundreds of our most vulnerable youth apply for summer employment. Failure to do this will result in more youth being out in the streets this summer.
For over 20 years I worked in partnership with the City on campaigning around having low income youth apply for summer employment. Presently I am retired and volunteer from time to time. I am willing to volunteer some time and support you if you wish to take control and mount a recruitment campaign.
Included with this mailing is a work scope of activities that I firmly believe will result in the applicant pool greatly increasing. Many of these activities have a direct role for you to play and other activities require your leadership to hold other leaders accountable for taking action. I have CC'd this letter to other City leadership to encourage them to get back to you with what they can do.
If you wish to meet to go over these action ideas, I am more than willing to meet. Most important to me is that our City takes control and moves to have our youth apply for your program. Time is running out.
Thank you for your leadership and I stand ready to support you.
Scope of Services For Summer Job Recruitment 2022
1. Broad Based Recruitment
a. Develop a social media outreach campaign to students and other agencies involved in the recruitment process. City should campaign to their own income eligible staff.
b. Make phone calls to students and families. Call every student that applied over the past two years. Have the City's Parks and Recreation Department call families they work with. Have Parks and Recreation take the City's lead partnering with Partner4Work on recruitment. Have Parks and Recreation be directly accountable to Mayor Edward Gainey on the success of an enhanced recruitment effort.
c. Send out recruitment text messages to students, parents, and agencies utilizing a text message service. City leadership can access a master list of 1,000's of phone numbers to text.
d. Answer or respond to phone calls from applicants, parents, and agencies. Partner4Work plays a key role in this matter as manager of the program.
e. Make copies of the template application for distribution.
f. Collect interest forms from PPS students during lunch time recruitment sessions and campaign to these students to have them follow thru on the application process. Mayor Gainey could visit a few of the schools that have the most at risk students. Make it a media event.
g. Conduct trainings helping city organizations understand the application process and encourage them to conduct recruitment activities.
h. Have Pittsburgh churches post information in their church bulletins.
i. Distribute flyers in varying places of business that families and teens visit.
j. Conduct postal mailings and email campaigns to non-profit and corporate leadership in Pittsburgh.
k. Engage Learn and Earn contractors encouraging and supporting their efforts to recruit Learn and Earn applicants. Have these contractors understand that if summer recruitment goals are not meant there may not be adequate numbers of youth to fill their summer contracts.
l. Encourage and support the juvenile court system and Pittsburgh's foster care agencies in an effort to have their children apply for Learn and Earn.
m. Distribute the City of Pittsburgh tee shirts and other giveaways to City students that fill out a Learn and Earn interest form during lunch room recruitment session.
n. Work with the media to distribute information.
2. School Based Recruitment
a. Collaborate with Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) to have PPS make calls to their families utilizing their robo-call system. Have the Mayor be the voice on the robo-call.
b. Engage counselors and other staff at PPS, private schools and charter schools about the application process so they can aid their students in completion of the application.
c. Send emails to staff at PPS, charter and private schools.
d. Develop a close working relationship with PPS and recruit students during the school day. Go into every high school classroom and recruit.
e. Send emails to staff at charter and private schools.
f. Send a recruitment mailer out to all PPS students 14 years and older. Get mailing labels from PPS. This would be about a 6,000-piece bulk mailing. (This is very important.)
g. Post promotional materials at the schools. Create a City produced flyer or acquire a flyer from Partner4Work.
h. Encourage school based personal to lead recruitment campaigns in their schools.
i. Have schools make regular morning announcements.
j. Hands on work with PPS to conduct an ongoing systemwide recruitment campaign. Work in partnership with PPS.
*** Raise more funds from the foundation and corporate community in order to serve the larger number of applicants resulting from an intensive recruitment campaign.
*** Tie grant funding directly into the numbers of youth served.
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