Chicago businesswoman Tammy Brownlee employed about 150 youth this summer through her Prime for Change nonprofit, one of 50-plus delegate agencies for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Chicago Youth Works (CYW) initiative. Held at the Purpose Center off South 85th Street and Commercial Avenue, Prime for Change offered mentorship and experiential learning opportunities for teens and young adults. They went on a college campus tour of Eastern Illinois University, worked the African Food Palace booth at the Taste of Chicago, and some even opened up their first bank accounts during in-person financial literacy workshops with Wintrust.
What particularly caught their eyes, Brownlee said, was introductions to entrepreneurship and trades such as construction. Brownlee said she wanted to show the youth that a college degree isn’t the only path to success.
“I was teaching the kids how to bid, how to fill out a request for proposal, RFP. Why they should get a DBE [Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, a WBE [Women’s Business Enterprise] and an MBE [Minority Business Enterprise,” Brownlee said. “The parents were coming to me and saying, ‘You told my kid how to get a DBE. I want to know how to do it, too.”
Each teen and young adult in the Prime for Change program were paid, too. They received bi-weekly paychecks. By the end of the six-week cycle for the 14- and 15-year-olds, they’d taken home a total of $450. A second cycle of youth ages 15 through 24, who were in an intensive three-week workforce experience, took home a total of $480, Brownlee said.
“Listen. I remember being a child in the city of Chicago, and we weren’t given these opportunities. Not at this level,” said Brownlee, a South Side native who also owns the for-profit Prime Proposal Group. “For every youth that we have in one of these programs, that’s one less youth doing something that they should not be doing. They’re learning skills that’s going to help them be a better person, and live a better life more than anything. So the investments that [the city] makes at 100 percent, they pay off 100 percent.”
In an exclusive one-on-one interview with The TRiiBE, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced that his administration made a record-breaking investment in youth this summer under the rebranded Chicago Youth Works. The city funded more than 32,500 paid opportunities for teens and young adults, the highest annual total in Chicago history, Johnson said. Employment models were largely split between minimum wages ($17.05 per hour) and stipends.
“This is part of the hallmark, if you will, of my administration, investing in young people. I have made this case repeatedly that when we invest in our young people, when we invest in our communities, it creates safer neighborhoods,” Johnson said.
According to Johnson’s administration, the city hired 10,866 CYW youth directly to the mayor’s office, aldermanic offices and sister agencies including the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA).
Nearly 20,000 CYW youth were hired by delegate agencies like Prime for Change; the funding for these jobs was provided by the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS). Some of the other delegate agencies include After School Matters, Phalanx Family Services, UCAN, Urban Male Network, Metropolitan Family Services and B.U.I.L.D. Incorporated.
“This is a reimbursement grant. For me, I fronted the cost for the program up front, [nearly] $200,000,” Brownlee said. “One thing that I’ve learned from the team at DFSS, who is over this grant, [is that] they are amazing. I’ve never met a grantor in my life who cares as much as them. The number one priority that they shared with us is making sure the kids get paid.”
The Johnson administration rebranded CYW from One Summer Chicago — created by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle in 2011 — for a reason. Johnson’s administration is seeing the demand for jobs grow each year. According to stats the administration provided, there’s been an 11.5% increase in youth ages 14 through 15 hired through CYW since 2024. And in 2025, they added an additional 4,000-plus positions to meet demand.
In 2018, under Emanuel, One Summer Chicago provided more than 32,000 summer jobs and internships to Chicago teens and young adults, ages 14-23, according to ABC-7 Chicago.
“I believe 57,000 young people applied for summer jobs, which debunks this notion that young people are not interested in working,” Johnson said. He added that the majority of CYW participants were hired from five community areas that have suffered from decades-long disinvestment: Austin, Auburn Gresham, Roseland, South Shore and North Lawndale.
“One Summer Chicago doesn’t speak to the goal of youth employment. My goal is to create year-round opportunities for young people, and though summers are an important, pivotal time for our young people, especially because school is out and we want to make sure that they are developing even while school is out,” Johnson explained, “but the long-term goal is to create more of these opportunities year-round because the need doesn’t go away because the season has changed.”
YOUTH JOBS AS A FORM OF VIOLENCE PREVENTION
Chicago has been in an unyielding conversation about what to do with its youth. Anytime a teen gathering, also referred to as “teen trends” takes place, the Chicago City Council — and many adults across the city — debate carceral punishment for teens through the idea of a “snap curfew” and even fines and jail time for their parents.
“First of all, the overwhelming majority of Black teenagers in this city, they are doing the right thing, striving to do the right thing,” Johnson said. “It’s a shame that, at least through the lens of corporate media, we don’t see the existence of Black teens as an asset to the very communities in which they are desperately seeking opportunities.”
According to Johnson’s administration, the city has seen declines in shootings, homicides and violent crime in the five community areas where the greatest number of Chicago Youth Works participants were hired from. For example, from 2024 to Aug. 18, 2026, all violent crime in North Lawndale is down 42.8%.
According to WTTW, Chicago saw its fewest homicides across any such month in more than a decade. In 2025, Chicago saw its lowest homicide total in 60 years.
“I believe young people are generally inquisitive, but we have snatched that away from them through the work of standardization. I believe it’s critical moving forward that we create as many spaces as possible to help foster the natural inquiry that young people have, the impressionable nature of young people, and then giving them the ability to explore what’s possible without trying to dictate or control the outcome,” Johnson said. “The biggest takeaway is where they come from does not have to determine who they become, but we do have to create intentional healing in spaces from which they do come from so that it doesn’t become an ongoing cycle.”
Of course, there are critics —even within the Black community — who stand firm in their belief that the parents of teens who engage in violence or the destruction of property should be held accountable. Some critics say Johnson isn’t hard enough on the youth.
To that, he said, “Of course parents have a responsibility, right? That’s not something that is breaking news. You don’t have to have a Ph.D., or a background in adolescent development or family health or human services, to understand that responsibility.”
For Black youth, however, there is a level of grace that they aren’t extended in this world; just look at the conversations around students wearing durags and bonnets at HBCUs, for example.
“I think living under that type of pressure or norm can be weighty for us, and parents do need support in supporting their children,” Johnson said. “My parents worked incredibly hard and they were not always able to be present — and that’s why we had coaches. You had your Sunday school teacher. You had aunts and cousins and other relatives and faith leaders, business leaders, that surrounded the community to support families who naturally needed that support. So I think, for our community especially, using the language or frame or the perspective of oppressors, or oppressive structures, won’t get us the results that we want. We want strong, safe communities where children and parents have access to all the things that we deserve.”
In reflecting on her Prime for Change, Brownlee remembered a young man who was “very disruptive” during the summer youth program. She ended up kicking him out of the program. He wrote her a letter, asking her to let him back into the program.
“In his letter, he said to me, ‘Everyone kicks me out.’ And he said, ‘If you kick me out, you just gonna be just like everyone else,’” Brownlee remembered. “I talked to his probation office and the probation officer told me, ‘If you don’t let him in the program, we may not see him next year, next summer.’ Meaning, he could be a victim to the Chicago streets.”
Brownlee brought the young man back into the program. She came up with alternative learning opportunities to keep him engaged and less disruptive.
“And at the end of the program, he hugged me. He said, ‘Thank you for allowing me to stay,’” Brownlee recalled.
The Johnson administration reports a 69.8% increase in the number of youth who identified as justice-involved. Brownlee said all of the youth in her Prime for Change program were from Chicago’s South Side. She said Prime for Change retained 95% of the youth who joined the program.
“It reminded me of the reason that these programs exist. If we don’t invest in the youth, who will? If you just [give up on them], that’s where you’re going to have the mobs and things like that,” Brownlee said. “If you give people a chance, they could end up proving you wrong.”
