With gun violence on the rise and a commitment to support the communities our campuses are part of, Northeastern’s Community to Community (C2C) impact engine gathered Boston stakeholders in service of local teens. 

In collaboration with city leaders, university researchers had begun evaluating city summer youth job programs years ago. Now, with an abundance of research citing the power of these programs to reduce involvement in crime and boost high school graduation rates, finding solutions was the clear next step. 

The result was the C2C Summer Youth Employment program. Launched in Boston in 2025, the program provides learn-and-earn opportunities to low-income, high school-aged youth. It now serves over 150 Boston teens each summer, plus a cohort of East Bay students on our Oakland campus. 

In 2025, we doubled last year’s Oakland campus C2C cohort. Over five weeks, local rising high school juniors and seniors earned wages as they learned professional skills in the Sustainability Hub, Student Financial Services, Mills College Children’s School, and other campus sites. Participants took part in weekly workshops on resumé writing, financial readiness, and other future-focused topics, and attended weekly introductory Bridge to AI workshops.