San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee joined other city officials and local business and nonprofit leaders Tuesday to challenge employers to provide jobs for the city’s youth this summer.
The Summer Jobs+ 2013 challenge is an effort to create at least 6,000 jobs and paid internships for youth this summer, an increase from 5,204 last year, Lee said.
“This is what San Francisco is all about, is job creation,” the mayor said at a news conference at City Hall. “We want everybody to feel the vibrancy of our city.”
He said, “The commitment is from the very top of this city to embrace all of the youth and what they want to do for their future.”
Various city departments have pledged to hire scores of teens and young adults, including the Recreation and Park Department, which will hire 205 people ages 14 and up this summer, department general manager Phil Ginsburg said.
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The United Way of the Bay Area is one of the nonprofits partnering with the city for the jobs challenge, CEO Anne Wilson said.
“The investment in our young people is essential to our future,” Wilson said.
Representatives from companies such as Starbucks and Salesforce.com attended Tuesday’s news conference to also pledge jobs for youth, while other companies like PG&E and Bank of America have contributed $100,000 donations to the program.
Of the 5,204 jobs created during last year’s challenge, more than 1,700 were from the private sector, according to the mayor’s office.
Tehmas Shaikh, 18, was one of the youths who benefited from the program last year.
Shaikh, now a freshman at San Francisco State University, grew up in the city’s Bayview District and signed up for the jobs program last year after finding a flyer on a Municipal Railway bus.
He said he spent the summer interning at a real estate company in the Financial District and was hired on as a part-time employee while he continues his education.
“Programs like this help youth become something,” Shaikh said. “I can benefit from these people and this environment.”
Employers or youth interested in the summer jobs program can visit www.matchbridge.org/summer or call 311 or 211.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
