What is the role or vision of YMI? Why is this work so important right now?
The role of YMI is to help the government. The best way I can really describe it is to relate it to football. I’m an old jock and I used to play football; when you want to improve on a skill, you work with a specialist. The specialist helps you correct your form, work on your foot work, and force you to do repetitive things over and over again, until you adopt it as your own. That’s what YMI is doing for the government.
You have to understand the government and what it was created to do. It was not created to serve Black and Latino communities, period. You can see that clearly when you look back at the beginning foundation of the New York City Government and you see issues like welfare and immigration. The Irish, The Italian, and the Jewish Community were able to assimilate because there is a “likeness in whiteness,” but these other two minority communities stood out because they looked different and they had different cultures and backgrounds.
Our role is to work with like-minded people in the government. The people themselves in a lot of these institutions are change agents, but the institutions are stuck and are still serving the same populations while leaving others out. So we are trying to help the government figure out how to better serve these minority populations as the future majority. If the Government doesn’t change its thinking and where it allocates its resources, it is going to end up supporting a minority over a majority and that is going to end in chaos.
What do you see as the successes of YMI before 2.0?
Well, first of all, I think they did a really good job of standing up because they pulled a lot of different pieces from a lot of different places to stand this organization up. The next thing I think they did really well was to pair it with an organization like CEO (Center for Economic Opportunity)—they do a lot of our evaluation work they also help us source best practices and find studies and hone in on our program design.
I also think one of the things the first YMI did really well was figure out what works. There are a lot of things that they sourced for and paid for and after evaluations now we can see that these things are truly working and that’s great. So we are going to take those and make sure they are brought over to 2.0. We are moving away from the things that didn’t work and that’s fine it’s part of the learning process. The best part of it was they didn’t have long term contracts with these organizations. They had three-year contracts, which was enough time to think of a plan and execute it. Now that we are at the end of that three-year contract period and our evaluations are coming back, we can see which organizations are not working, and we can move on. We have to constantly make sure that our resources, dollar for dollar, are being used efficiently.
How does the work at YMI align with ESI?
I think we are sort of the agitators, meaning that we understand the harm that the status quo is doing to Black and Latino young men and young women. What we both try to do, and I have to say ESI is a little further ahead than we are, is to aggregate and implement best practices with these groups. So we are looking at mentoring programs that have the best outcomes for Black and Latino young men and women. We want to find the organizations with the best models and then fund them. By doing this, I feel we are trying to change the status quo. Right now a lot of CBOs (Community Based Organizations) fight over contracts and fight over the populations. They inflate what they can achieve with these goals and then a lot of times they fall short. I think that has to do a lot with how we do funding in the government. A lot of the time the government will fund just one model, give them a contract, and either renew or not renew that contract. So, that means that everybody is fighting for just one contract. But it is more important that we promote cooperative nature amongst these CBOs. We give them a milestone goal, ask them to partner together, have them tell us how they will share the resources with these organizations, and we ask them to make sure that we have locally sourced small CBOs.
I think this is a lot of what ESI does. Instead of schools doing all of their own stuff, they share best practices. The liaisons talk about what’s working best at their schools so there is a feeling of support and community.
With the expansion of YMI, what do you see for the future? What are the next steps?
I think that if we continue this way, in a couple of years we will end up with a model for the city that is all about collaboration. A lot of it is how government can work best together. For the next steps, we really want to start filling gaps. What the government should be able to do a better job of, in the long-run, is not just keeping resources in the same area where there are positive results , but doing a gap analysis of areas where they could be getting better results.
What do you see that is working right now?
One of the things that I am seeing that is really working is the level of enthusiasm. Not just with our ESI colleagues but also the CBOs that we have partnered with. They are really excited about being able to do this work and not have to worry about fundraising.
At the end of the day I will consider this tenure to be impactful if I am able to look back and see permanent infrastructure that is diverting and reinvesting resources to where it is most needed. We aren’t saying that we shouldn’t fund certain parts of the city but I think we need to be mindful of where our resources are going. Areas where a person on average is making $100,000 a year will most likely not need our help as much. But I think it is important that those areas are invested in the areas that do need our help. If I look back and see Park Slope as invested in Brownsville’s education as they are in their own education, then I think we will have done a good job. I think the city is beginning to understand that young Black and Latino males and females are going to be a big driving force of how successful the city will be.
By Erica Pretel