Opportunity Youth Break Into Hollywood Through Youth Apprenticeship

Entertainment and media companies like Warner Brothers, Disney, and Paramount are the latest early adopters in a growing trend of employers in nontraditional industries turning to youth apprenticeship to recruit new talent. In California, PAYA Network Member and nonprofit Better Youth is taking a unique approach to connect foster and unhoused youth to multi-employer youth apprenticeship programs in the creative economy.

Better Youth operates five youth apprenticeship programs that are registered both federally and with the state of California’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards. The occupations include: Game Designer, Animation Artist, Multimedia Artist, Video Editor, and their most popular apprenticeship, Project Manager. By registering their youth apprenticeship programs, Better Youth is able to braid state-level funding like California’s Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship grant (COYA) and flexible philanthropic support to connect young people to employment opportunities and robust supportive services.

Better Youth utilizes a unique rotation model to connect young people to paid work experiences. Most of the young people in their program are Project Management Youth Apprentices who complete 2,000 hours of on-the-job training and 150 hours of related and supplemental instruction at the University of California, Riverside. To meet state registration requirements, employer partners assess apprentices’ competencies every three to six months, so some Better Youth apprentices work for one employer for an initial three-month stint and then switch to a different employer for an additional three months. In cases where an employer may want to retain an apprentice for six months, they have the option to extend the work period, or Better Youth can subsidize an apprentice’s wages to extend their time at the company. To date, 75 percent of apprentices decide to enroll in additional on-the-job training or classroom-based education programs, and 70 percent of apprentices get job placements three to six months after completing their apprenticeship.

One student, Chrisie Morris, joined Better Youth in 2022 as an Animation pre-apprentice, taking on a rotation of short-term internships at the film studios DreamWorks and Lionsgate. She quickly thrived in those roles, which led to an apprenticeship with Skydance Animation, the parent company of Paramount. Thanks to her commitment to learning on-the-job and Better Youth subsidizing her wages to extend her apprenticeship, Skydance offered her a full-time position as a Features Production Assistant starting in January 2026. Chrisie’s story shows how the rotation model can help determined young people quickly develop their resume to showcase their interests and talents in a relatively short period of time. 

Care management, Better Youth’s term for offering social, financial, and case management services to apprentices, starts from day one of an apprentice’s experience. Each new apprentice enters an eight-week bootcamp to create a two-year personalized and comprehensive roadmap of supportive services and training programs. According to a recent report from the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship, high-quality youth apprenticeship programs specifically cater to the developmental needs of young people, and in the best cases, offer supports like this bootcamp “by default” to ensure no student feels hesitant to accept the support they need to thrive in an apprenticeship program.

Better Youth has taken these recommendations to heart by offering a broad range of supportive services in-house. These services include: nutrition and social-emotional education; peer advising from program alumni with similar lived experiences; and legal and mental health support offered by on-site specialists. Their emphasis on cultivating strong social connections is critical for opportunity youth who are less likely to have social capital in the workplace or a reliable social network at home. 

The nonprofit has also established partnerships with California-based organizations to ensure students have access to the technology they need to enter the media industry. Thanks to a partnership with The Change Reaction, apprentices can access emergency microgrants for unexpected expenses, and over 95 percent of Better Youth apprentices have received free personal laptop computers. Another partnership with Adobe offers apprentices free licenses for animation and gaming development software. Apprentices can also receive financial literacy education free of charge through Better Youth’s partnership with the financial and business software company, Intuit. 

This “one-stop-shop” approach has ensured that all 35+ alumni of Better Youth can receive services on-site—from finding stable housing to just-in-time supports like transportation stipends and technology access that are vital to ensuring young people persist in their program.

Apprentice Yaslynn Thomas received on-the-job training working in post-production at the popular TV show America’s Got Talent in post production and is now working at Better Youth to complete her hours. Yazz recently produced a video presentation of Better Youth’s 2025 cohort culmination ceremony.

Better Youth’s youth apprenticeship model showcases how a structured, but adaptable career pathway can be a transformative experience for young people, regardless of their status as systems-impacted or previously unhoused minors. They prove that the right combination of braided funding can offer flexibility to deliver the services that any young person might need to thrive in a high-quality youth apprenticeship program.