City of Fresno allocating $1M in funding to help youth

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The City of Fresno is taking action to allocate funds that will help the community's youth.

"Our young people are some of the most important people in our city. The earlier we can invest in them, the better our outcome will be," said councilmember Annalisa Perea.

On Thursday morning at Fresno City Hall, councilmembers unanimously passed funding for a program focused on the community's youth.

It will set aside one million dollars in grant funding specifically for the One Fresno Youth Jobs Corps Program.

The program offers unique job opportunities for young folks facing barriers.

" To go toward hiring our youth who are historically more on the harder to hire side, they are homeless or got into a little trouble. This sets them up with the opportunities to have hands-on workforce training," said Perea.

According to the city, there are about 4 thousand people experiencing homelessness, including the youth.

Perea says that because the city's homeless crisis is so complex, this program is helping make an intentional, lifelong impact on some.

"Whether they are at Fresno Unified school district, Central unified, or Fresno City College...we do unfortunately have a segment of our population of our young citizens that are homeless."

The program has helped over 500 people so far.

Perea says the city also recently approved allocating $75,000 for next year's budget for youth programming, allowing the city to help even more youth in need.

She says the money could be used in multiple ways.

" This can come in many forms as far as what the final outcomes will be, and one option could be restarting the city of Fresno's youth commission. It's really important to get our young folks more engaged civically."

You can learn more about the One Fresno Youth Jobs Corps Program by clicking here.

For news updates, follow Elisa Navarro on Facebook, X and Instagram.