Nonprofit celebrates community-building work with and for Waltham youth

The Waltham Partnership for Youth celebrated its 30-plus years in the community this week at its Annual Partner Celebration, where it raised money and presented the progress it has made in the community this year.

Partners said there’s much to fete when it comes to this longstanding nonprofit that connects youth to vital community resources. 

“I would love to see what [the WPY is] doing replicated in more communities,” said Tara Agrawal, director of community investment at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Office of Community Health, a key WPY partner.

The WPY, founded in 1988, runs numerous programs for Waltham youth, including ones serving families who’ve just arrived in Waltham, teens struggling with mental health and youth trying to get their first experiences with employment.

Its efforts have impacted many young people in the city. WPY’s internship program, for example, has been connecting high school students with paid summer internships at Waltham-based businesses since 2017. This year’s interns will be working at a variety of organizations including The Waltham Times.

“The impact that the summer internship program can actually have on you is something I’d like to underscore,” said Nina Kremer, a current student at University of Southern California, who landed an internship through the WPY and later worked with the organization itself. “I owe a lot to WPY.”

WPY also offers a few yearlong internships, mostly focused on education and health care, and it connects participants with Bentley University students for mentoring on job search activities such as resumes, cover letters and interviews.

Another cornerstone of the WPY’s programming is Wraparound Waltham, which connects Spanish-speaking students new to Waltham with resources in and outside of school to help them adjust to their new community. 

Administered in partnership with Waltham Public Schools, Wraparound Waltham runs classes for new middle and high school students and staffs a welcome center at McDevitt Middle School that serves all students and community members during its after-school hours. 

McDevitt Principal Scott Lipman praised what WPY offers to the students and the city.

“Schools cannot do the work that is expected of us on our own. We need collaboration with community partners,” said Lipman. “The collaboration we have at WPY, to me, is exceptional.”

Listening to young people

WPY Executive Director Magali Garcia-Pletch said WPY highly values the input it gets from Waltham youth to determine what services are needed. 

“Young people have the right ideas, and they are the ones we should be listening to,” she said. “As much as we can be, [we’re trying] to have adults hear their voices.”

To do that, WPY works with Waltham Public Schools to administer a biannual Youth Risk Behavior Survey. 

Garcia-Pletsch said that because students have often mentioned mental health struggles in their YRBS responses, the WPY intends to further expand its mental health-focused programs in coming years. 

Those survey responses helped spur the WYP’s 2022 launch of the Teen Mental Health Alliance, which teaches high schoolers about careers in the mental health care sector and provides training on mental health crisis responses. 

Garcia-Pletsch said the organization also plans to expand its offerings in other directions to adapt to changing community needs. For example, it wants to work with its partners to prepare more students for work in important, fast-growing career fields such as health care and biotech.

Kremer sees the need for even more, explaining that she would like to see WPY run additional events for high school students, especially underclassmen, so they know about the WPY’s resources and can access them throughout their high school careers.

Similarly, Garcia-Pletch said she wants to build more awareness and support in the Waltham community. The WPY receives the majority of its funding from private partners such as Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. The WPY doesn’t receive much federal funding, and less than 20% of its funds come from individual donors.

Garcia-Pletsch also hopes to see more Waltham residents get involved in the WPY’s work through events like the Partners Celebration.

“Whether [it’s by] attending events, signing up for our newsletter, generally supporting our work, donating to the organization… I just really hope that people in the community see us as a place that they can be getting involved in if they care about young people,” she said.

Disclaimer: The Waltham Times is hosting an intern as part of the WPY Career Exploration program this year.