Wendy-Anne Roberts-Johnson has a new vision for teen employment — but first she has to rebuild Philadelphia Youth Network

A few years before this year’s Class of 2024 high school seniors were even born, Philadelphia was becoming a pioneer in cell and gene therapy.

As they are set to collect their high school diplomas, too few realize that the city’s life science sector is nationally ranked number 5 in the nation and has the potential to provide them a job with a sustaining wage.

Wendy-Anne Roberts-Johnson, the president and CEO of Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) sees this as her greatest challenge — moving from the traditional teen six week summer job to developing a youth career development system that starts earlier and goes deeper, ensuring no graduates leave high school without a clear opportunity for a high-quality job.

The problem is before Roberts-Johnson got a chance to make changes as the new head of the city’s largest summer jobs programs, her own opportunity was gone.

When she was brought on board as CEO last April, PYN was already in the midst of preparing for another summer-as-usual whirlwind. They would hire about 7,500 students at 650 worksites and pay them $8.2 million dollars — providing Roberts-Johnson little time to execute her ideas.

She had also walked into a storm.

What Roberts-Johnson couldn’t foresee was her first summer would be PYN’s last managing the citywide youth employment program,a role the nonprofit organization had been involved in for almost 25 years.

It had become more difficult to secure the millions of dollars in funding and the thousands of youth job opportunities needed. The federal funding from COVID-19 relief efforts was also disappearing. According to PYN 2022 annual report, 88% of its money came from government funding.

There were also questions about PYN’s management. During the summer of 2022, frustrated parents and providers went public with complaints that many of their teens were not being compensated as promised. Council threated to hold aninvestigation to look into the paycheck delays. In October that year PYN put out a report, Readapting Summer, admitting they needed to make “systematic and programmatic changes.”

» READ MORE: City councilmember calls for hearings on Philadelphia Youth Network after summer of complaints about teens not getting paid

On March 7 the city announced a new youth workforce development program, Career Connected Learning PHL (C2L-PHL) to provide paid summer and year-round work activities for youth 12-24 years old. The program is a collaboration of the city, the School District of Philadelphia and Philadelphia Works. The announcement called C2L-PHL “a significant step forward for Philadelphia’s youth workforce system.”

PYN was out and a new lead organization, JEVS Human Services, was selected to manage C2L-PHL.

Now, instead of turning a behemoth in a new direction, Roberts-Johnson is left with trying to rebuild a program that, after losing an estimated 80% of its $19 million in revenue and laying off one-third of the staff, is fraction of what it was.

“It was extremely discouraging and challenging but I tend to be this person who has a lot of hope and also feel young people deserve the best,” Roberts-Johnson said.

There has been some good news. PYN will be a C2L-PHL provider this summer and was just awarded a five-year grant from PA’s Dept. of Education to provide affordable, safe and high-quality out-of-time care for 225 middle school students in Northeast Philadelphia.

About the 40% of Philadelphia’s youth live in poverty and teens from poor backgrounds have the least access to opportunity employment, perpetuating generational poverty.

“We keep failing our kids,” said Roberts-Johnson, the mother of two adult children.

Roberts-Johnson remembers her earliest job experience as a young teenager on her home island of St. Vincent. It was a summer spent working with an uncle in his sundry shop. It wasn’t exactly exciting — sweeping floors, folding clothes, waiting on customers — but it fostered responsibility and taught her discipline while making some money.

She believes that work for youth should be so much more than it was for her, not just a check but an experience that provides mentorship and purposeful work connected to business.

“I know deep down and from talking to staff and folks who have been at this longer than I have, that we really have to do something different,” Roberts-Johnson said.

“I tend to be this person who has a lot of hope and also feel young people deserve the best.”

Roberts-Johnson was the former executive director of Need In Deed which helped the city’s public school teachers build classroom civic engagement before she joined PYN. She first faced a deficit with that organization too but by the time she left she had lead them out of their multi-year deficit.

She thinks she can do it again.

“It will be a heavier lift this time,” she said.