As the weather gets warmer, families anticipate the end of another school year while planning summer camps and vacations. After the excitement comes a concern that there will be enough productive activities to keep young people out of trouble.
Millennials and Gen-Xers can remember freely exploring their neighborhoods as children, creating social groups and sharing with neighbors. Generations Z and Alpha, however, are more prone to staying indoors, glued to their screens for hours. Safety issues abound for younger generations enduring mass shootings in classrooms, increased anxiety and decreased spaces for free play.
“If we really want to keep our children safe, we should delay their entry into the virtual world and send them out to play in the real world instead,” wrote social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Anxious Generation, released in 2024. “Unsupervised outdoor play teaches children how to handle risks and challenges of many kinds…Discover mode fosters learning and growth.”
There is hope for parents and guardians searching for positive outlets for their children to have a productive and safe summer. Services by the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County can meet the complex needs of 21st-century families through coordinated partnerships addressing the social determinants of health such as healthcare, housing, employment, nutrition, environment, education and social networks.
The city’s Youth and Family Success Chief Sonya Pryor-Jones is a Cleveland native raised in the Glenville neighborhood by her teenage parents (who are still married today) and extended family. She credits her supportive community and enrichment programs to her positive upbringing. “We are fully staffed, we have social support specialists that are working across all 17 wards and 22 recreation centers,” said Pryor-Jones. “Last year, our social support services staff had over 1,200 individuals in 2024 who showed up needing support (such as) needing access to food, it can be a housing issue, a utilities issue, or sometimes it’s just young people needing an adult to talk to and they build a trusting relationship because they see this adult constantly in the rec center, so that has been really impactful.”
The lenses of empathy and trauma-informed care inform the work of Youth and Family Success staff in the Bibb Administration, in the areas of violence prevention, early intervention and social support for aging individuals of multigenerational households. The Mayor’s office of Prevention, Intervention and Opportunity was idealized during Frank Jackson’s tenure before COVID halted progress. Beyond the pandemic in 2022, the Bibb Administration established the Youth and Family Success office to assess the pandemic’s impact on education, mental health and community engagement with the focus of investing in resources for more fulfilling childhoods.
“These (city) departments really do care about youth,” said Devin Philpott, senior at Cleveland School for Architecture and Design after witnessing Bibb’s executive order signing for the Municipal Cabinet for youth. “I’ve been here on this Earth 17 years and have never seen something like this, so it’s really important for me to see this happening in one motion, I’m so happy he signed that for us.”
Investments, for example, are grants funding the Look Up To Cleveland youth leadership cohort under the Cleveland Thrives violence prevention program; cross-sector partnerships between community-based organizations like DeNounce ReNounce Violence Interruptors and Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD); and legislation supporting parental leave for city employees. Furthermore, CMSD and community partners’ Summer Soundtrack brings academic, recreational and employment programs to prevent learning loss and boredom. Pryor-Jones said the district’s summer programs impacted 7,000 scholars in 2023 and increased to 11,000 in 2024, despite lapsed afterschool program funding that year. Youth have access to more than 1,000 jobs and career-building experiences through Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU), still taking applications through May 1 at its website, youcle.org/syep. Pryor-Jones said 3,000 young people work summer jobs across Cuyahoga County, thanks to that partnership. What’s more, Clevelanders can access employment opportunities at city recreational centers.
As part of the Cleveland Leadership Center, Look Up To Cleveland (LUTC) helps 50 high school juniors from 28 public and private schools build relationships and problem-solving with innovative projects. The 39-year-old program is supported by grants and participating schools pay nominal tuition for participants. For example, in the seven-month program, LUTC alum Siena Maschke and six peers explored under-resourced neighborhoods impacted by redlining, examining ways to enhance green spaces of the Midtown area and better connect amenities like Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Clinic. “LUTC positioned me to learn about different leadership styles and how we can learn to work with other people in the best way, and that goes to interacting with new people in college,” said the Laurel School alumnus and Denison University freshman. “It was a way for my peers to actually engage with our community and see something from the inner city aspect because a lot of the participants are from suburban communities.”
Successful youth development programs stems from consistent outreach in places where young people congregate. Pryor-Jones said more resources are needed in order to sustain the programs beyond government funding, so her office remains focused on building corporate partners for more summer jobs reaching 5,000 Cleveland youth ages 15 and up. Partnerships include Cleveland Police, local elected officials, the Brenda Glass Trauma Center and Gradient Think Tank.
LaRon Douglas, Sr., executive director of ReNounce DeNounce Violence Interruptors based in northeast Ohio and Tennessee, believes the likelihood for violence decreases when young people access necessities like transportation, clothing, housing and meals and communal support. The goal of his cognitive behavioral program is to “take back minds of youth (ages 11-25) who are negatively influenced by the street culture,” he said.
Powerful story! What a difference mentoring makes in the lives of our youth. Well done Terricha!