About Our Organization:
At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.
Founded in 1924, and still relevant today, Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs and capacity-building initiatives, directly serving more than 13,000 youth in Kansas City, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Chicago.
Position Summary**:** The Becoming A Man Fellowship Initiative (BAM-FI) Program Specialist is responsible for the planning, development, coordination, execution, and evaluation of the BAM-FI Program, an intensive academic and leadership training program to help young men of color complete their high school education prepared to excel in college or other post-secondary experiences. The BAM-FI Program Specialist implements of all program elements, including BAM-FI Fellow recruitment and onboarding, BAM-FI Program activities and training, which includes Civic & Leadership Development and collaborating with the College & Career Manager for programming across BAM-FI.
Essential Duties/Responsibilities:
- Participate in the strategy and implementation of the BAM-FI Program in alignment with the established program model and funder expectations
- Participate in the planning and execution of BAM-FI Program training content and coordinate operations of Saturday training sessions, parent workshops, summer engagement, and special trips and collaborate on college tours.
- Assist in the coordination of academic support intervention, tutoring, all civic engagement workshops, and community service initiatives
- Must be able to work a flexible schedule, including programming three Saturdays per month during the school year, weeklong summer intensives, support workforce development programming, and multiple overnight college exposure tours per year
- May travel to conferences and national team meetings 1-2 times a year
Client/Stakeholder Relationship Management
- Establishes positive and constructive relationships and serves as a positive role model to BAM-FI Fellows
- Serves as primary liaison and communicates with BAM-FI Fellows, parents/guardians, school personnel, community partners, and other stakeholders regarding program goals, activities, and outcomes
Project Management
- Creates and manages program implementation project plans and timelines
- Supports the learning agenda for TFI and partners with the Evaluation and Quality Improvement Department to support systems to monitor Fellowship progress and collect data to document program impact
- Coordinate and execute college and career exposure trips and special events
Minimum Qualifications
Education/Experience/Training
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Bachelor’s degree in a public/non-profit administration, business, social work, human services, or a related area from an accredited university program; master’s degree preferred
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2-3 years of experience providing direct service to youth or young adults in a social service organization or educational setting
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1-2 years experience executing complex and multi-faceted programs or projects
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Experience providing career development or postsecondary support to young adults preferred
Skills/Abilities
- Communication: Able to use effective written and oral communication with internal and external audiences and stakeholders; demonstrates empathy and listening
- Client orientation: Can recognize the needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation to ultimately maximize the impact
- Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity; consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
- Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if a change is required; Demonstrated ability to be solutions-focused, self-reflective, and dedicated to the continuous improvement of service quality
- Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work and work of teams ensuring delivery of high-quality work. Proven ability to be innovative and a self-starter
- External representation and relationship building: Represents the organization among external stakeholders, and builds strong, trusting relationships with stakeholders
- Manages with data: Understands data; analyzes data and identifies insights and implications
- Proficient use of Microsoft Office Products (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Physical Demands
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to sit and stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stoop, kneel and crouch.
- The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal.
- The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.
Work Environment
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounter while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.
- This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines.
- Frequent need for travel
- Modified work week and schedule required
- The duties performed are primarily in an office setting and working with the public, COVID-19 vaccination is required.
What Youth Guidance offers:
We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:
- Hiring Range of $48,000.00 - $65,000.00
- A hiring bonus of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
- A retention bonus of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
- A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
- If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement. Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.
DEI Statement
At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.
As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:
- Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff.
- Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity, expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices.
- Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.
Youth Guidance is an equal-opportunity employer and proudly values diversity. Youth Guidance does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law and is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity along all of these lines. People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
EOE/M/F/D/V/SO