Urban Alliance to help Baltimore youth with job training, life skills through $160K grant

Listen to this article

Baltimore students in Urban Alliance’s flagship High School Internship Program will receive internships, professional development and life skills training and one-on-one mentoring through a $160,000 grant from The Citi Foundation in partnership with Prosperity now.

The grant was made available for Urban Alliance’s Pathways to Progress Youth Financial Capability Fund, an initiative to support young people on their path toward economic independence.

Economically-disadvantaged high school seniors enrolled in Urban Alliance’s flagship High School Internship Program in Baltimore and Chicago will receive paid, 10-month internships, professional development and life skills training, one-on-one mentoring, and intensive case management both during and after the program to prepare students for a life of economic self-sufficiency. This program’s unique structure allows students to immediately apply the financial capability skills they learn to the real world, as they work to budget and save their internship paychecks.

Prosperity Now will provide technical assistance to all awardees, as well as convene a community of learning for organizations to share best practices in financial capability education.

The Youth Financial Capability Fund is part of the Citi Foundation’s Pathways to Progress initiative, which supports organizations around the world that are helping empower young people and connect them to the opportunities, knowledge, and skills needed to succeed in a competitive, 21st century job market.

Founded in the District of Columbia in 1996, Urban Alliance has since expanded to Baltimore, Chicago, and northern Virginia. To date, Urban Alliance has placed nearly 4,000 students in paid internships and served another nearly 18,000 through job skills training.