Steps in Coordinating A Young Worker Project
Each young worker project developed its own approaches to engaging participants, building partnerships, and disseminating information on the basis of the community's needs. Yet all projects shared common strategies drawn from established public health education principles. The following section summarizes the most important steps.
1. Identify and Involve Key Players in the Community
Preventing occupational injuries to young people requires the combined efforts of diverse groups and organizations: businesses, labor groups, schools, job placement and training programs, youth-serving organizations, family members, health care providers, the media, and government officials. We identified representatives of these key groups in our communities and looked for ways to integrate young worker safety and health into their ongoing activities and policies. We found it helpful to recruit many of these players into our project advisory committees.
By participating on the advisory committees, many community members were able to accomplish aspects of their own programs in a more effective way than they would have been able to do on their own. For example, representatives from school-to-work programs gained new materials and curricula, and job training programs used peer educators and new fact sheets to teach about safety and health. The advisory committee meetings also became a place for people concerned about similar issues to talk and network.
Right from the start, we coordinated our project activities with existing programs and agencies in Brockton. We allied ourselves with the school-to-work program at the high school, for example, where there were many resources to share. The school staff also gave us contacts in the business community—groups like the Private Industry Council and others that were already involved in teen employment. In fact, we got a large turnout at each advisory board meeting and a lot of active participation through the duration of the project.
We also got support from the local government. The mayor's office appointed a liaison to our board who attended every meeting. When we first met with the mayor, he emphasized that we should link our initiative to existing local projects so that people wouldn't feel overwhelmed at the prospect of a whole new initiative. That was very good advice.
—Robin Dewey
Project Director
Brockton, Massachusetts
2. Assess Needs and Resources
Investigating community needs and resources provides valuable information on which to base a project: (a) the extent and nature of local teen employment and work-related injuries; (b) local knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about the issue; and (c) the resources available to address young worker safety and health. Collecting this information can stimulate community interest, as it allows you to identify where interventions are most needed and feasible. Although the time and resources may not be available to conduct a thorough assessment, the following tasks should be considered:
I think our successes were based on our recognition of the unique needs of our immigrant community, and we tailored our work to those needs. For example, the role the students played in the project turned out to be very different from what we expected. Initially, we had planned to reach teens by involving parents in the project. But in our community, where so many of the parents are not proficient in English and know very little about their own legal rights at the workplace, it went the other way. The teens ended up educating the parents. In fact, the teens became a very valuable liaison between the project and the entire community, and in the process, they developed their own knowledge, leadership, and communication skills.
—Linda Delp, Project Director
Los Angeles, California
Collect, analyze, and publicize employment and injury data
Most community members were unaware of the extent of teen worker injuries. Consider providing local, State or national statistics. Local data from workers' compensation records and student surveys, presented in a user-friendly format, helped to "bring the issue home." However, this data may be difficult to get, and the numbers of injured teens may appear small. State and national data is easier to obtain, and the numbers may be more compelling (see Appendix B).
Identify relevant resources
We met with representatives from key groups in our communities to ensure that our efforts complemented and did not duplicate existing initiatives. We discussed ways they could incorporate activities related to teen worker safety and health into their existing programs, publications, and training sessions.
You may be asked to provide information, materials, and training on the topic of young worker safety and health or to provide referrals to others who can do so. Contact relevant State agencies including your State's Department of Labor, Department of Public Health, and Department of Education; learn about child labor laws; collect educational materials; and identify sources for referral and assistance (see Appendices A and B).
Assess knowledge and attitudes about young worker safety and health
Before beginning your project, become familiar with the knowledge and attitudes about young worker safety in your community. This information will allow you to tailor materials and programs to your target audience's concerns. You may find that issues such as workplace stress, sexual harassment, and low pay are of greater concern to many groups in the community than are injuries. For our assessments, we used surveys, focus groups, and interviews with teens, parents, and employers.
Violet Muņoz, like many young girls in Los Angeles, got her first job when she was 15, working in the "alleys" of the garment district. Her job tasks included unpacking garments, completing inventories, and selling clothing.
"Sexual harassment happens all the time in the alleys," she explains. "People would tell me that all these weird things were happening on the job and nobody would say anything because they thought 'it's OK, it's part of my job.' I would tell them, 'No, it's not OK,' but they would say, 'That's just your opinion, Violet.' But now that I'm involved in this project, I can say, 'hey, I have proof now-it's not part of your job.' "
The issue of sexual harassment is an example of how we adapted our plans to meet genuine community needs. Many of the young girls in our community get jobs downtown in the garment industry, and they informed us that sexual harassment was a problem for them. We didn't go into the project with an awareness of how important the issue of sexual harassment was in our community, but the girls educated us about the problem. Together we were able to develop strategies for handling it. We all learned that the issues involved in workplace safety and health are a lot broader than just how to handle machinery safely. They encompass a whole range of legal and ethical rights and responsibilities. We need to recognize the most significant issues in each community and help people find the resources to address them.
 —Linda Delp
3. Develop a Plan
Working with your community partners, review the information gathered through your needs and resources assessment. Agree on attainable goals and objectives for the project. Include the following in your plan:
 Activities that will help you attain your objectives (see Working with Community Partners).
Methods of measuring your activities.
Individuals and groups who will be responsible for each activity.
A timeline (one that corresponds to the school year).
4. Initiate Activities
We performed a variety of roles in our young worker projects. Your role in implementing a project may require you to do the following:
Provide training for teachers, peer educators, and other community leaders who can then provide information to their constituents on an ongoing basis. If you need assistance, contact relevant State agencies (see Appendix B).
Serve as a resource by providing materials and technical assistance about safety and health and child labor laws to community groups.
Implement educational activities in collaboration with representatives of target populations. For example, you can (1) help teachers develop a workplace safety curriculum; (2) work with peer educators to set up a display for a health fair; or (3) give a presentation on teen workers to a local medical society meeting. These and other examples are detailed in Working with Community Partners.
Collaborate with others who are engaged in related activities at the State level. Examples of State-level initiatives regarding young worker safety might include a proposal to change the child labor laws, developing school-to-career guidelines or training manuals, and a State-level coalition to improve adolescent health.
5. Evaluate Efforts—Revise as Needed
Throughout your project, you will want to evaluate your progress, the reach of your project, and the impact on the knowledge and practices of your target groups. The following are evaluation strategies we found useful:
Track your progress in meeting project objectives by recording
 the length of time activities require compared with your original timeline,
the receptivity of target groups to undertaking planned activities, and
barriers and problems that arise.
Determine the reach of your project by recording
the number of materials distributed,
the number and type of individuals and organizations reached through training and presentations, and
the number and type of requests received for information and assistance.
Measure the impact of your project on local knowledge and practices by conducting
pre- and post-surveys of target groups, such as students and employers,
interviews with representatives of target groups, such as youth and business organizations, and
visits to workplaces to record safety changes.
Understanding what impact your program has is really important. We held discussion groups in several classes 3 to 4 weeks after they participated in peer-led or teacher-led health and safety activities. We also held discussion groups with students who had not been involved in any of our program's activities. We presented a scenario about a teen worker in a pizza restaurant to each group and asked them to identify the work hazards, any workplace rights being violated, and how the young worker in the scenario should handle the situation.
Students who had not been involved in the program tended to dismiss health and safety issues as trivial and a form of complaining. They were much more challenged in offering solutions to the problem—"If nobody else complained, evidently it isn't bothering anybody else—buy your own safety equipment!" Students who had participated in our programs were able to name more job hazards, including less obvious hazards, and were easily able to describe a variety of problem-solving strategies, including collective action. It was great to see how comfortable these students were with discussing health and safety issues and analyzing possible solutions!
—Diane Bush, Project Director
Oakland, California
6. Obtain Funding
Funding can be kept to a minimum by having young worker safety and health integrated into existing efforts. However, you may need additional fund for resource materials, special events, staff support, outside trainers, etc. If so, it may be helpful to contact local and State agencies, businesses, and foundations. We discovered that many of these organizations were interested in funding or providing in-kind resources for various aspects of our projects. Some examples include the following:
State workers' compensation agencies
State health agencies
State employment agencies
local chambers of commerce
private foundations, especially those that focus on education, your locality, youth, or workplace issues
local schools and universities
insurers
Federal or State OSHA agencies
NIOSH
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Facts about Young Worker Safety 
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