Brandeis center will manage Walmart initiative to line up summer jobs for teens

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

The Walmart Foundation, the charitable arm of the retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said it has given $5 million to a Brandeis University research center to manage a summer jobs initiative that is designed to help about 3,000 teenagers get work.

The Walmart grant calls for its “2012 Summer Youth Employment Initiative” to be managed by the Center for Youth and Communities at Brandeis’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. As part of the 2012 Summer Youth Employment Initiative, the foundation plans to allocate more than $20 million in grants to various local nonprofits across the country.

The foundation’s plan calls for the Brandeis center to support work-and-learning programs in such urban areas as Phoenix, New York City, Hartford, Philadelpia, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

The goal of those programs is to have teenagers work 150 hours over a six week period and earn an average of $1,200, the foundation said.

One assignment for Brandeis researchers is to monitor and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of those work-and-learning programs, the foundation said.