City’s Summer Youth Employment Program Wins Achievement Award

June 11, 2018

On Saturday, June 9, the U.S. Conference of Mayors awarded the City of Tallahassee with its City Livability Outstanding Achievement Award for the Tallahassee Future Leaders Academy (TFLA) program. TFLA provides area youth with mentorship, job readiness training, financial literacy education, college exposure and summer employment.

"We are honored to receive this prestigious award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors," Mayor Andrew Gillum said. "Since launching TFLA in 2015, we have doubled participation and engaged partners from the public, private and nonprofit sector to help ensure our young leaders gain professional experience and resume-ready skills to be successful in our future workforce."

Established in 1979, the City Livability Program honors mayors and their city governments for developing and implementing programs that improve the quality of life in America's cities. Each year, ten programs are recognized and receive awards. This year's award-winning cities were selected by former mayors from a pool of over 150 applicants. Tallahassee was one of two Florida cities recognized with a City Livability award.

"Our City Livability Awards Program gives us the chance to express our pride in cities' mayoral leadership in making urban areas cleaner, safer and more livable," said Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of the Conference of Mayors.

The Tallahassee Future Leaders Academy, which continues to earn Tallahassee national attention, is an eight-week program that begins with two weeks of job readiness training followed by six weeks of paid employment. Employment placements are offered through the City, private organizations and local businesses around the Tallahassee area. Over 220 area youth are currently participating in the summer 2018 program.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. To learn more about organization, visit https://www.usmayors.org/. Information about the City's TFLA program can be found at Talgov.com/TFLA.