Partnerships and Mentoring for Boston Youth with Pedro Cruz
Partnerships and Mentoring for Boston Youth with Pedro Cruz
This episode of the Cultivating Connections podcast features Pedro Cruz, the Executive Director of the Office of Youth Engagement and Advancement (OYEA) for the City of Boston. Pedro shares his inspiring journey into youth work, rooted in his experiences growing up in the Boston’s Villa Victoria community. He emphasizes the importance of relationships and community spaces that shaped his path, reflecting on how early jobs at local community centers ignited his passion for youth development. Pedro highlights the significance of mentorship in his own journey, and the importance of providing Boston youth with mentors today.
Pedro provides an overview of OYEA’s pioneering efforts to engage Boston’s youth aged 14 to 25 which focuses a great deal on creating partnerships with a wide range of youth serving organizations. He explains their mission to amplify young voices in local decision-making and connect them with resources and opportunities often inaccessible to them.
He also shares successes such as building a network of over 1,100 individuals from nearly 400 organizations and reviving the Mayor’s Youth Summit after a 20-year hiatus, demonstrating the demand for dedicated spaces and programs for young people. The episode concludes with Pedro discussing the upcoming Youth Needs Assessment survey, aimed at understanding what young people require during their non-school and non-work hours, further underscoring the office’s commitment to serving Boston’s youth effectively.
About the Guest
Pedro Cruz is a proud first generation American-Puerto Rican son, brother and father to three beautiful girls. He is a lifelong resident of the City of Boston and a product of Boston Public Schools. Through Pedro’s leadership and commitment to Latinx and urban youth, he has helped young people gain and develop academic, critical thinking, writing and artistic skills. Pedro is an accomplished artist himself, and seizes his own creative talents to engage youth in conversations about the challenges and opportunities they face, providing them the space to be civically involved and become change agents.
Before stepping into his role as the Director of the Office for Youth Engagement and Advancement in 2023, Pedro was the Director of IBA’s Youth Development Program in Villa Victoria. He is an organizer at heart and was able to mobilize not only the young people, but also members of his team and Villa Victoria residents. Pedro helped expand the youth program and increased community participation during his tenure at IBA. Throughout the pandemic, he helped create virtual learning pods to support students during the virtual learning experience. During this time, he also created virtual youth programming to assure they continued to serve the young people during the pandemic. Growing up in the community and going through the program as a teen, Pedro became a strong role model and mentor to the young people. It is often that we hear from participants how Pedro’s guidance, coaching and mentoring have helped them stay on track with their academic, personal and career goals.
Pedro completed a two-year community fellowship program at Massachusetts College for Art and Design. He also enrolled in the Institute for Nonprofit Practice (INP) to sharpen his management and leadership skills. The INP is a rigorous program that demands reading and learning about the field’s best practices. Pedro was accepted into the program with a full scholarship and recently graduated from the INP program.
Pedro is very personable and an effective communicator, which helps him connect with diverse segments of the community as well as with policy makers, funders, and influential leaders. He has become a strong Latino leader committed to the youth, to equity and to community development.
When Pedro isn’t working with youth in the community, he is at home spending time with his daughters, making art or riding his bike around the City.
Episode Notes
Connecting with OYEA
Please use this form to submit events and resources for OYEA to promote! Submissions should be Boston based, free, and open to/aimed at youth ages 14-25 years old. Newsletters (highlighting both events and resources) are published every week on Tuesday morning, so content should be submitted no later than Friday of the week prior. Community events are published on their website’s calendar on a rolling basis.
The next meeting of the OYEA Partner Network is Friday, November 22, from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. You can register for the meeting via this link.
This episode was produced by Leah Mulrenan and David Crowley.
About SCI Social Capital Inc.
Our story at SCI centers on strengthening communities by intentionally cultivating connections through inclusive community programs, partnerships, and leadership development.
In June of 2002, SCI was founded by David Crowley. Returning to his hometown of Woburn, he created an organization focused on bringing people together. For two decades, we have taken action, big and small, to respond to what our community needs, in our hometown, and beyond.
The concept of social capital is about the importance of our social networks, and the value of the trust in relationships and communities. SCI addresses the need to increase the social capital of a community and the individuals in it.
SCI’s mission is to strengthen communities by connecting diverse individuals and organizations through civic engagement initiatives.
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