Why CityWorks DC Created a Youth Creative Agency
Lateefah Durant is the CityWorks DC Vice President of Innovation.
It’s officially recruiting season for CityWorks DC programs. And the best way to recruit new apprentices is by turning to students and asking them to engage directly with their peers as they all consider their futures.
One key part of youth outreach is online engagement. We recognize that the people who know how to best speak to younger generations online are people of that generation. The CityWorks DC team decided to hire, pay, and support a peer-to-peer messaging network to grow our program enrollments. Over the last couple of months, we’ve developed new ways to do just that. Today, we launched CityWorks DC Creative, a new digital content agency run for and by young people. Local high school students, recent high school graduates, and college students met with digital marketing professionals to create unique content to engage with DC high school students and recent graduates considering the next steps of their careers. The agency has not only become a powerful outlet for student voices, but is providing a source of income and professional networking.
Participants created videos designed for unique platforms. CityWorks DC Creative Sameen designed a TikTok outlining our programs and how participants can benefit. She utilized the CityWorks DC style guide for caption colors, emojis to grab the audiences’ attention, and narrated the video to create a personal connection with the audience.
CityWorks DC endeavors to break down the systemic barriers to youth employment and offer innovative programs to ensure the District’s youth of color are prepared for, hired into, and successful in the District and region’s high-wage, high-demand careers. We chose to hire young people in our own organization to support DC youth in income growth, career development, and meaningful work. We recognize that the systems change work to support local talent must start at home.
When we started this new venture, we reached out to DC public and public charter high school students and alumni about this opportunity to join the youth agency and hired seven emerging creatives. Over the course of the four month program, our creatives learned about digital marketing careers while designing content. CityWorks DC leadership provided notes on each deliverable iteration, which creatives incorporated into their content. After completing this career development opportunity, CityWorks Creatives now have a portfolio and real world experience, backed up with performance metrics that can take them to their next project, their next interview, or out into the world to start something of their own.
We are proud to present the final deliverables of this powerful new creative agency. Be sure to follow our Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok as the CityWorks DC Creative Agency shares their content.
We hope you'll share CityWorks DC's career development programs with the young people in your network and encourage them to apply at cityworksdc.org/apply. And, if you or your organization is interested in partnering with us to provide greater employment opportunities for DC young people contact me at ldurant@cityworks.dc.