PODER Joven/Youth Power

About Youth Power/PODER Joven

Sponsored Employment Program

 

About PODER Joven/Youth Power

PODER Joven provides 3 ten-week sessions each school year (fall, winter, spring) and 1 summer 10-week session to between 13 and 15 newcomer youth in 7th and 8th grade. Our program provides a safe and welcoming space where immigrant youth can be engaged and feel connected. The programming components include: a popular education curricula that includes theories, and perspectives of people and groups historically underrepresented, leadership development, community action initiatives, and an educational English Language Learning enrichment component.

Utilizing a popular education curriculum the program integrates knowledge with active application through community action to address issues of urban areas, social justice, immigrant rights, poverty and diversity. Community action initiatives will focus on creating social supports and improving the community and school climate for immigrant youth. The program builds immigrant youth resiliency by providing structured opportunities for immigrant youth to discuss issues of importance affecting their lives and to act as agents of social change. Immigrant youth are an at-risk population and face multiple barriers in their lives.

We recognize and address the fact that immigrant youth develop in multiple social worlds. A critical factor of immigration is the disruption of relationship networks that are available to immigrant youth – loved ones are almost always left behind; they are often separated from younger siblings before joining them in the new country, and new living settings may present few or not necessarily healthy social choices. Immigrant youth often lack consistent sources of social support to provide them with information, tangible help, and emotional encouragement as they forge new identities that may allow them to integrate into their new society. The program seeks to provide them with a supportive environment where youth can work productively and creatively through the many issues they encounter and be able to turn change and struggle into power and leadership.

The program also addresses important factors to immigrant youth’s adjustment to a new society. In the English Language Enrichment component of the program, we address second language acquisition, bilingualism and the tensions that arise between the parental culture of origin and that of the new social context. The program seeks to provide a safe and supportive place where immigrant youth can come to terms with these divergences, contradictions, and competing cultural models and incorporate their strengths effectively in their additional role as English language learners. As an additive component to their regular school instruction, the program seeks to enable students to develop bilingual and bi-literacy skills as well as content-area academic achievement with the goal of helping them perform as soon as possible at their grade level expectations. We seek to ensure equity and integration for all students through the development to multicultural competencies and the realization that their active participation in society is crucial to their own success. The curriculum is cognitively challenging, enriched, and standards-based.

This curriculum will be based on the curriculum currently implemented in the youth’s ESL classes as well as additional information based on the individual students’ needs. Working in collaboration with the ESL teachers at the youth’s school we will provide tutoring, support and further enrichment of the material the youth are exposed to during the school day. The curriculum also includes:

• Sheltered instruction that is both level/proficiency appropriate but which is also challenging
• Use of graphic organizers, concept maps, word walls, and other cognitive aids to help students organize information and language
• The development of understanding across languages
• The development of Academic English (the language used in textbooks and classrooms and is key to content-area learning) across content areas and across domains (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
• The social use of language
• Provide high-quality vocabulary instruction
• Address the meanings of common words, phrases and expressions not yet learned
  
  

Along with the above mentioned material and practices, the youth will be encouraged to increase their reading and writing abilities through in session practice to aid them in their English language development, vocabulary development, critical thinking and analysis skills. The youth will have the opportunity to practice their emerging English language skills in a safe and enriching environment where they can move beyond being language learners to language users.

PODER Joven consists of three strands:

• A popular education curriculum that includes theories, and perspectives of people and groups historically underrepresented, leadership development, community action initiatives.
• An ELL educational enrichment component
• Professional Development Training

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Sponsored Employment Program Interns
Summer 2006

From left to right: Yoanna Bucio Rial, Ana Soto, Jesus Chavez, Yasmin Chavez, Priscila Reyes

PODER Joven/Youth Power grew out of Nuestra Casa's experience working with Latino immigrant youth who were participating in the Sponsored Employment Program. Nuestra Casa originally signed up to host one SEP youth worker but ended up hosting five SEP youth after learning that there were only a handful of nonprofit or small businesses in the area that saw the value of hosting Latino immigrant youth of whom many were limited English or Spanish monolingual speakers.

In the summer of 2006, five immigrant youth, ages 14 - 21, were placed at Nuestra Casa for a six-week employment opportunity. As a host agency in its third year, Nuestra Casa is preparing youth in East Palo Alto by building their assets and skill set. These skills can be applied to future jobs as well as to their current educational endeavors.

The summer of 2006 Nuestra Casa SEP cohort conducted a community survey on the quality of education in the Ravenswood City School District. Youth received training in action research, canvassing, outreach, public speaking, and campaign development. As part of their preparation, youth reviewed data on each school within the Ravenswood City School District. The 2006 cohort surveyed more than 200 community residents on various issues concerning public education in East Palo Alto.

Additionally, they participated in the Ravenswood City School District strategic planning session, A Journey to Excellence on June 24, 2006. They had an opportunity to share their views and opinions as immigrant youth and English Language Learners (ELL) who were or are currently enrolled within the school district.

In order to nurture critical thinking skills, all five youth read biographies or autobiographies of human rights leaders. The project-based learning aspect of their internship involved development of a group PowerPoint presentation on these leaders.

At the end of their internship, they developed career, educational, and personal goals, a resume, reference list and a personal statement.

 

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