Our SYEP Partners
- Community Youth Center
- Hunter's Point Family
- Japanese Community Youth Council
- Jewish Vocational Service
- Office of Economic and Workforce Development
- Vietnamese Youth Development Center
Am I Eligible for SYEP?
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Why Do I Have to Be Eligible for SYEP?
SYEP is funded by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which means that anyone who is participating in a WIA program must meets certain requirements that have been determined by the U.S. Department of Labor and the State of California. You can find out more about WIA here.
How Do I Know If I Am Eligible?
The first requirement is age. To be eligible for SYEP, you must be at least 16 years old and no older than 21 as of June 6, 2011.
The second requirement is your income level. To figure out if you meet the income requirement, first count the number of family members living with you. Family members only means immediate family, such as your mother, father, siblings, husband, wife or children. Uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces or grandparents do not count.
Next, you must figure out how much your family income was for the last six months. There are two ways to do this:
- The first is to determine if you qualify as “Automatic Low-Income”
- The second is to calculate your family’s total earnings for the last six months, based on their wages.
You may qualify as “Automatic Low-Income” if:
- You are homeless, a runaway, or a foster child
- You are a person with a disability and your own income alone meets the income requirements for a family of one.
- You or someone in your family receives food stamps or income-based public assistance
If none of these apply to you, then you must use wage and earnings information for all members of your family to figure out how much your family income was for the last 6 months. Look at the chart below and see if the total income falls at or below the required amount for the number of people in your family.
The third requirement is that you must face a hardship in finding a job. If anything listed below applies to you and you can provide verification documents of the barrier, then you qualify as facing hardship in seeking employment:
- Deficient in basic literacy skills
- Pregnant or parenting teen
- Involvement in the justice system
- Homeless or runaway
- An individual with a disability, including a learning disability or enrolled in special education
- Limited English proficiency
- High school dropout, truancy or have less than a “C” average
- Substance abuse
- Resident of public or Section 8 housing
- Emancipated youth/current or former foster youth
- Veteran
- An immediate family member in your household is receiving cash-based public assistance (such as food stamps, GA, etc.)
- You are 19 years or older and have not held a job for more than 13 weeks in the last 12 months
The fourth requirement is Selective Service Registration. If you are a male 18 years of age or over, you must register with the Selective Service in order to be eligible for this program. You can register online by going to the Selective Service website.