What Missouri loses when we cut YouthBuild

By Kayleigh Wiecken, Missouri Independent

I was 16 years old and hadn’t been to school in months.

It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. My family had moved from Mexico, Missouri to Centralia, and from the moment I arrived, school felt like a place that wanted me gone. Girls in my grade spread rumors about me. Teachers and coaches belittled me. I was a wrestler – I loved that sport – until my coaches humiliated me at practice in front of everyone, and I lost my spark for it.

My brother, who has autism, was sent home so often that my mom couldn’t keep her job and kept picking him up. My little sister was being bullied, too.

So we stopped going. And I sat with that for a while — no school, no credential, no clear path anywhere.

Then I found YouthBuild.

YouthBuild is a federally funded program that connects young people no longer in traditional education with a second chance. For me, the closest YouthBuild program was at Job Point in Columbia. At Job Point, I found skills, support, and a genuine sense of belonging. I also found my social worker, Brandy, who had seen the program work for other young people and thought it might work for me.

I enrolled at 16, waited a year until I was old enough to take my high school equivalency tests, and then passed all of them within a month. I went on to complete Job Point’s carpentry program, learning to read a tape measure, build furniture, put up trusses – all things I never expected to do.

Attending these trainings helped me earn scholarship funding that will let me pursue further education without paying out of pocket. I want to be a mechanic someday, in honor of my grandfather who passed away. That future is now within reach.

I feel like I have so many more opportunities. I can actually get somewhere in life now.

That is what is at stake as federal funding for YouthBuild faces cuts. Sometimes what happens in Washington, D.C., feels really far away and disconnected from my life. This feels different, for me and for every young Missourian who is one bad school experience away from falling through the cracks.

YouthBuild doesn’t just provide job training. It provides the kind of whole-person support that young people who’ve been failed by traditional systems desperately need. I got help with mental health, with financial literacy, with the basic confidence that comes from being in a room where people actually want you there. That’s the thing I noticed most: I actually felt like people wanted me to be there. I felt welcome. There was no pressure, like there was at a normal school.

Job Point serves young people across Columbia and mid-Missouri — young people who, without YouthBuild, might stay stuck. Not because they lack ability or ambition, but because the systems around them failed first. My brother wants to enroll when he turns 16. My sister is too young right now. The program has to be there when they’re ready.

When federal funding disappears, these programs close. The staff who know these young people move on, because they have to. And that means that the next young person like me doesn’t get the call from someone like Brandy, a call that could turn that young person’s life around.

Missouri has too many young people already left behind. We cannot afford to leave more.

My message to anyone in a situation like mine: don’t give up, because there are new opportunities ahead. You just have to be patient, and they’ll come your way.

My message to people in power, whether it’s in Missouri or Washington, D.C. – fund YouthBuild. A lot of young people’s futures are in your hands.