YEP's mission is to improve the employment and education outcomes for Oakland youth and young adults impacted by poverty, the justice system, foster care, homelessness, school underachievement and other barriers to work by providing transformative job training, critical skill building, and contextualized education paired with hands-on work experience in a living classroom. Founded in 1973, YEP operates one of the highest-performing youth workforce development programs in the San Francisco Bay Area, having served more than 34,500 low-income (since 1973), high-risk young people in Oakland, with more than 85% completing their training and 78% placed in employment and/or advanced education.