Ben & Jerry's First-Chance Hiring Program Aims to Combat Marginalized Youth

BEN & JERRY’S JOINS NEW HIRING PROGRAM FOR AT-RISK YOUTH TO PREVENT INCARCERATION

Ben & Jerry’s hiring program

Ben & Jerry’s is participating in Unlock Potential, an intentional employment program for marginalized young people, specifically those who are at high risk of incarceration. The program intends to hire to promote racial equity, recruit future corporate leaders, and break the poverty-to-prison pipeline. The CEO of Ben & Jerry’s, Matthew McCarthy, acknowledged that while second-chance employment efforts are necessary, preventing young people from being incarcerated in the first place is equally important. Meaningful employment opportunities have been proven to be one of the most effective ways to prevent future incarceration. Unlock Potential, supported by Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity, aims to address the profound racial inequality and economic immobility caused by justice-system contact, especially in BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities.

Unlock Potential will help businesses combat the workforce shortage, invest in future leadership, and create a fairer and more equitable society. Allie Reid, Ben & Jerry’s Sr. Retail Racial Equity and Inclusion Manager, believes that offering meaningful career opportunities to Black and Brown at-risk youth supports skill development and economic mobility in their communities.

The program will focus on the 4.4 million Americans aged 16 to 24 identified as “disconnected youth” who are neither in education nor employment. These young adults are more likely to experience negative outcomes like poverty and incarceration. Unlock Potential will focus on a subset of this group that has additional risk factors for incarceration.

The program’s design consultation phase is expected to end in October, after which Unlock Potential will launch a 12-month pilot program. Ben & Jerry’s franchised Scoop Shops will partner with prospective hires to provide them with actual career opportunities for growth. Participants will also receive support services through Persevere, a national non-profit organization, to ensure their success.

In America, 4.4 million young people aged 16-24 have been marginalized and excluded from the country’s education, employment, and opportunity systems. These “youth of promise” and their families and communities deserve better and Unlock Potential aims to offer them a chance to build a future for themselves. Ben & Jerry’s is excited to be a part of this program spearheaded by the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, which aims to create genuine career opportunities for young people who face institutional racism and systemic barriers to success and well-being. We call this program “first-chance hiring.”

For years, Ben & Jerry’s has worked with partners to help people who have been incarcerated or have faced other employment barriers find jobs and start meaningful careers. However, providing second chances is not enough to truly advance racial equity, increase economic mobility, and break intergenerational cycles of incarceration and poverty. The youth we mentioned earlier are five times more likely to have a criminal record than their peers, and 33% of them live in poverty. A criminal record can have a severe impact on one’s life, and people who have been incarcerated have an unemployment rate of 27%. First-time incarceration reduces a person’s lifetime earnings by over 30%. Unlock Potential offers these young people their first chance to escape the cycle of poverty and incarceration.

Unlock Potential

In America, systemic racism creates barriers to education and employment that disproportionately affect people of color, leading to low-wage work and hard-to-break cycles of generational poverty. 55% of the “youth of promise” are Black and Brown, and in some areas, young Black and Brown people face up to six times more systemic barriers than white people. Black people are incarcerated at almost five times the rate of white people, and one out of every three Black boys born in the US today can expect to be sentenced to prison. Racism in the education system results in over-policing and disproportionate disciplining of Black students, leading to missed classroom time and contributing significantly to the school-to-prison pipeline.

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