Orange County Youth Center

1. Orange County Youth Center of La Habra

2. Fact Sheet The Orange County Youth Center (OCYC) offers young adults the opportunity to develop their career interests, receive academic support, and gain valuable work experience in order to achieve their career/educational goals. Our services are available to *eligible* youth, ages 16-21, in North Orange County. • OCYC participants will: • Receive tutoring assistance and academic support • Receive counseling and/or mentoring • Learn how to design a resume • Explore career paths • Conduct a job search • Gain work experience and employment • Earn an accredited high school diploma • Required eligibility necessary in order to participate in our program: •  Must be between 16-21 years old • Low income (as determined by the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines) •  Resides in the North Orange County • (Fullerton, Buena Park, Brea, La Habra,La Palma, Yorba Linda, and Placentia

3. Fact Sheet • And one or more of the following challenges • Deficient in basic skills such as reading and math • School drop out • Homeless or a runaway youth • Pregnant or a parent • An offender • Foster/emancipated youth • Child of an incarcerated parent • Gang member, gang involvement, or at risk of gang involvement

4. Executive BIOS Al RodriguezOCYC Manager • Al Rodriguez is the manager of the Orange County Youth Center of La Habra. He has led on going reconstruction of the programs and services that are available to the youth. Al graduated from Azusa Pacific University as a Communication major with an emphasis in journalism. He began working in the City of La Habra in 1990 as a temporary summer youth case manager. He became a program coordinator in 1998 and left in 2001 in order to work for jobs for California’s graduates as a general manager. He returned to the City of La Habra in 2005.  Al has developed the program to include an on-site high school diploma completion program, created a partnership with the National Retail Federation for youth to achieve an occupational skills certificate and constructed a certification program for the Food Handlers’ Certificate. He also established a partnership with Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital to bring free health care services to the students.

5. JenaePartida OCYC Recruitment Specialist JenaePartida was a participant in the Orange County Youth Center program in 2003.  She received work experience at Western Youth Services and began her interest in social work.  After finishing her work experience assignment, she was offered a position at the Youth Center as the youth employment representative, acting as a peer counselor.  Jenae later received a promotion to junior case manager and immediately received a full time position with the Youth Center.  Gus Ochoa OCYC Career Development Specialist Gus Ochoa graduated from La Habra High School. Once finishing high school he attended Fullerton College and went on to transfer to Cal State Fullerton. He received his B.S. in Psychology and then attained a Masters at Chapman University in Educational Counseling.

6. Backgrounder The OCYC has implemented a program structure to assist the youth to achieve a variety of career and educational goals. One of their many programs is the amazing youth engagement program that gives the youth the opportunity to develop employment skills and learn positive work habits through actual work experience. Participating OCYC youth complete a 300 hour internship at a company where they learn how to build a strong work ethic, rapport building, and basic computer skills. After fulfilling the required hours, OCYC compensate the intern. The participating business will then have a chance to hire the intern as an employee. The OCYC began approximately 40 years ago when the city of La Habra decided to take advantage of the Comprehensive Employment & Training Act, a United States federal law enacted in 1973 to train workers and provide them with jobs in public service. The center has been furnishing these services since the 1970’s to youth from Buena Park, Fullerton, Yorba Linda, Brea and Placentia.

7. Q & A 1. How long has this organization been up and running? The City of La Habra has been providing youth employment services and programs since the 1970s. 2. How did you become involved with this organization? Once I graduated from college, and began my job search, I called several different local city government offices to see if they were hiring.  I stumbled upon a temporary Summer Youth Case Manager position with the City of La Habra. That was in 1990, and I’m still here! 3. If you started this organization, why did you start it? or why do you believe in it? I believe in our program, because I believe in redemption, in second-chances, and  in positive life changing decisions. We have a fantastic program in place, and an extraordinary staff, but it’s up to the youth to sign up and decide that they are going to make positive changes in their life. And I’ve been witness to many amazing transformations throughout my time here at the Center. 4. What do you, personally, spend most of your time doing? Most of my time is spent in administration of the program, which includes budgets, staff supervision, ensuring our program follows State, Local, and Federal guidelines, and developing new partnerships. 5. How has your program improved over time? When I became the Manager of the Center (about 8 years ago), it was a one-dimensional work program. It was successful, but we concentrated on just getting kids jobs.  We also did not have a system in place.  Youth would walk into the Center, but there was no “flow” on how they would navigate through our program.  I developed a program model that we currently use to guide youth through our various services.   We’ve also  taken a more holistic approach, and now we have a full time high school on site for youth to complete their high school diploma.  In addition, we have two occupational skills programs for youth to get a nationally recognized certificate. 6. How many individuals have gone through this program and out of those how many that you know have been successful? We only keep statistics for each program year.  Our latest year end figure has us serving 128 youth with 76% entering post-secondary school or getting a job, and 79% getting a certificate or credential, including a high school diploma. 7. What are your future goals and what are your plans to achieve them? We would love to have mental health component on site – someone who could provide counseling and guidance in achieving coping and behavioral modification skills.  We would also like to expand our services to include career development for middle schools.  We are currently researching grants to make this possible.

8. BYLINER

10. Orange County Youth Center 1811 W. La Habra Blvd. La Habra, CA 90631 www.ocyouthcenter.org Phone: 562-905-7076 TTY: 711 Fax: 562-9057095 www.info@ocyouthcenter.org