“Year Up set me up for success, and through Google, I made the most of my apprenticeship opportunity,” said Pedro Rodriguez, a Year Up Alum who is now an IT Resident at Google

Year Up Bay Area (YUBA), a nonprofit workforce development program for motivated and talented young adults, announced that it has received a $250,000 grant from Google.org for its Silicon Valley site in San Jose.

The funding will support YUBA’s mission to close the Opportunity Divide in San Jose by providing young adults (ages 18-24, without college degrees) with in-demand technical and professional skills training, internship experience, and college credits.

“Empowering the young adults in our local communities to dream big and pursue their passions as they begin their careers is extremely important to us,” stated Javier Gonzalez, Google’s South Bay Policy Lead. “Year Up has been an invaluable partner in providing youth the tools they need to succeed in the Bay Area and beyond.”

In 2019, Google is hosting 27 Year Up apprentices nationwide (the highest number of Year Up apprentices Google has hosted in a single year), including 11 young adults in San Jose. Apprentices in San Jose are working in Project Management, Data Analytics, and IT/Helpdesk—on Google’s Corporate Engineering and REWS (Real Estate & Workplace Services) teams.

Year Up’s training and internships have enabled thousands of young adults to secure full time jobs. Eighty-one percent of recent Silicon Valley graduates have secured full time or contract jobs, with 54% hired by the company where they interned. These graduates report average starting wages of $27.18/hour.

“Since we first launched our Silicon Valley site, Google has been an ardent supporter of our work — providing apprenticeships for students, collaborating on new approaches to skills training and helping us expand our presence in San Jose,” said Emily Schaffer, Executive Director of Year Up Bay Area. “With this grant, we will be able to increase our impact further and connect even more young adults in this city with companies in need of their talent.”

One hundred Year Up graduates have been hired to work at Google across the US since it began partnering with Year Up in 2009. In 2018, Google.org began offering scholarships to Year Up students to complete the Google IT Support Professional Certificate on Coursera, allowing them to prepare for IT Support Specialist roles in less than six months. Year Up is also partnering with YouTube to help create playlists and shape content for YouTube’s new learning channel.

“Year Up set me up for success, and through Google, I made the most of my apprenticeship opportunity,” said Pedro Rodriguez, a Year Up Alum who is now an IT Resident at Google. “I worked closely with my apprenticeship manager to identify where I could bring the most value to the team as well as where I could challenge myself to grow. It’s exciting to see Google continue to invest in Year Up to benefit more young professionals like myself and see young adults from my community develop the skills and connections to succeed.”

YUBA provides free job training to young adults at campuses in San Francisco, San Jose, Menlo Park, and at Diablo Valley College. Students gain in-demand technical and professional skills in the first six months, then participate in a six-month apprenticeship at a top local company like Google. Last summer, the federally-sponsored Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) evaluation of Year Up showed a 53% increase in initial earnings for young adults randomly assigned to Year Up compared with similar young adults in a control group—the largest impacts on earnings reported to date for a workforce program tested in a randomized controlled trial.

Since 2008, YUBA has served more than 3,000 young people, creating a pipeline of diverse, motivated talent for more than 50 of the region’s leading businesses in areas such as Project Management Support, IT Helpdesk, Cyber Security, Quality Assurance and Data Analytics. YUBA now serves more than 640 students annually, with 92% of graduates employed or attending college within four months of completing the program, earning average starting salaries of $55,000/year. Learn more about YUBA by visiting us on Facebook and Twitter.

About Year Up

Year Up is an award-winning, national 501(c)3 organization that enables motivated young adults ages 18-24 to move from minimum wage to meaningful careers in just one year by providing the skills, experience, and support they need to reach their full potential. Through a one-year, intensive program, Year Up utilizes a high-expectations, high-support model that combines marketable job skills, stipends, coursework eligible for college credit, and corporate internships at more than 250 top companies. Its holistic approach focuses on students' professional and personal development to enable young adults with a viable path to economic self-sufficiency and meaningful careers. Year Up has served more than 24,000 young adults since its founding in 2000, and will serve more than 4,700 young adults in 2019 across 25 U.S. cities including Arizona, Baltimore, Bay Area, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Greater Atlanta, Greater Boston, Greater Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, the National Capital Region, New York City/Jersey City, Puget Sound, Rhode Island, South Florida, Tampa Bay, and Wilmington. Year Up has been voted one of the “Best Non-Profits to Work For” by by The NonProfit Times for eight consecutive years, and rated a 4-star charity by Charity Navigator for twelve consecutive years, placing them in the top 1% of tracked organizations.

To learn more, visit http://www.yearup.org, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter: @YearUp

About Google.org

Google.org, Google's philanthropy, supports nonprofits that address humanitarian issues worldwide and apply scalable, data-driven innovation to solving the world's biggest challenges. We accelerate their progress by connecting them with a unique blend of support that includes funding, products, and technical expertise from Google volunteers. We engage with these believers-turned-doers who make a significant impact on the communities they represent, and whose work has the potential to produce meaningful change. We want a world that works for everyone—and we believe technology and innovation can move the needle in four key areas: education, economic opportunity, inclusion and crisis response.