QUESTION
Council Member Stevens Asks DYCD About Changes in NDA Program Areas Due to Community Feedback
0:30:32
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170 sec
Council Member Althea Stevens inquires about the 2020 update in Neighborhood Development Area (NDA) program areas, specifically regarding the introduction of economic development, safety awareness, crime prevention, and the discontinuation of disconnect youth programming. Deputy Commissioner Mike Bobbitt explains the agency's response to feedback from the 2016 community assessment, detailing the decision to adjust NDA programs to avoid service duplication and address unmet needs, particularly around economic development and safety.
Speaker 1
0:30:32
In 2020 neighborhood development area content paper, do you guys to be either economic development and safe near awareness and crime prevention as new program areas.
0:30:41
And disconnect the youth programming.
0:30:44
What feedback did the agency receive from the 2016 community assessment that led to this change?
Speaker 3
0:30:52
Thank you, Cher.
0:30:53
Well, as you know, we conduct the CNN every 3 years.
0:30:56
And as we've discussed, the CSBG funding is minimal.
0:31:00
Relatively minimal, and we try to be flexible and adaptable as we are learning things.
0:31:05
So we made an institutional determination to adjust the NDA mix of programs rather than provide duplicative services.
0:31:13
So I'd give you A little illustration is at the inception, the last cohort of programs, when we have the opportunity with program, there was a belief that while the US already had an array of youth workforce programs, might be useful to have another program that didn't have some of the educational requirements of those programs.
0:31:36
And so that was one of the reasons that we precipitated on launch opportunities programs.
0:31:41
We did an internal review, and we engaged an MWBE vendor to do some further research on that portfolio.
0:31:50
And it turned out that there were some programmatic and operational challenges with operating the program.
0:31:58
Persons who would have qualified for the youth workforce programs were actually it was is ending in being duplicated.
0:32:04
They were being enrolled in the same kind of programs.
0:32:06
So the target audience we saw wasn't really being reached.
0:32:10
And like other NDA programs, And now I'm getting a little wonky, I apologize, but I got other NDA programs.
0:32:17
They're hyper specific, so you're enrolling people in the in the main, in the neighborhood.
0:32:22
And the wages would be paid out of the same allocation.
0:32:26
So in order to do that program when it was piloted, the wages were paid for the workshops were not.
0:32:32
So when we had youth that enrolled in that program and they found about other youth work youth workforce programs that we're paying for them to be in workshops that would rather be in that program.
0:32:42
So when those things happened, we saw there was an opportunity to shift and to lean into a reinvigorated version of a program that the agency hadn't supported since 2003, which was the economic development program.
0:32:59
And I'll add this there's precedent for this before because under the last administration, when there was a dramatic expansion of after school, There used to be NBA high school and NBA middle school programs, but we didn't need to have NBA middle school programs when there were city tax levy funding that was amply supporting after schools who are able to lean further into some of these otherwise unaddressed needs.