For Young People, Juma is More Than a Job It’s a Stepping Stone to Success

Alvin Yu wanted to be the first in his family to go to college. But he needed a job to save money. 

Without a lot of job opportunities for a 16-year-old from San Francisco’s Sunnydale neighborhood, Yu caught a break thanks to the local nonprofit Juma. They employed him at a concession stand at Oracle Park – a first job that would set him on a road to success. At Juma, the first job experience is key to unlocking young people’s potential. 

Juma was founded in 1993 with the aim of creating a supportive work environment for low-income and disconnected youth. Their mission is to help young people learn vital job skills, earn an income, and learn to manage their money while laying the foundation for a successful career.

After a baseball season of slinging hotdogs, sodas, ice creams, and other ballpark favorites, Yu saved up enough money to go to San Francisco State University where he studied business management and operations.

“Juma broke down a lot of barriers for me,” Yu says. “It gave me my first job in customer service and taught me soft skills and how to manage conflict.”

The fact that Juma employs young people like Yu means its expert staff are trained in managing young workers who have faced multiple barriers to work. They have control over the hiring and retention of them.

“If a young person is chronically late in any other work environment, they’d get a number of dings and then be fired,” says Juma CEO Adriane Armstrong. “At Juma, if a young person is late, that’s an opportunity for their manager to ask them what’s going on.” 

What’s often the case is that they are having transportation issues or they have enrolled in a GED program that overlaps with work hours, Armstrong points out. In those circumstances, transportation assistance is offered and hours can be shifted to accommodate. With accommodations and clear expectations, Juma youth staff invariably rise to the occasion. It’s the supportive job environment – in addition to career exploration and the supportive community – that makes Juma “work” for so many youth.

Today, Juma operates in 20 sports entertainment venues across the country, making them the largest youth employment social enterprise in the nation, employing roughly 1,000 young people a year. 

As for Yu, he went on to become an employee at Juma and even started his own boba shop across from the stadium where he worked as a teen. After several years of running the café with his wife, also a Juma alum, he decided to sell it to Juma, so that teenagers could have more opportunities to learn important work skills and save up money to pursue their dreams.  

From selling hot dogs to selling a boba business, Yu came full circle.