KC Social Innovation Center

Hire KC Youth was started in 2014 by former Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Sly James. Today, with the leadership of Mayor Lucas, Hire KC acts as the city's youth success platform helping to align and organize the region's work-based opportunities across the public, private and nonprofit sectors to support equity, and to illuminate career pathways so that all youth can learn and grow into promising futures. Mayor Lucas committed to moving forward with Hire KC in spite of the challenges posed by COVID-19, and the City?s youth internship program transitioned to virtual experiences, and subsequently KCSIC launched the Youth Opportunity Relief Program YORP, a campaign designed to help youth regain some of the financial and experiential losses around summer jobs that simply are not available in the current labor market as a result of COVID-19. At a time when students and youth across the city remain unclear and uncertain about returning to school, and as many families struggle to make ends meet with under-employment and joblessness, Hire KC is addressing the youth population directly with safe, innovative ways to support youth engagement and employment this summer, and into the fall, with experiential opportunities that have financial benefits.

Consulting - KCSIC provides consulting and expertise to clients as a think and do tank helping create a sandbox for technology, community, education and business to collaborate to explore and catalyze solutions to bring value to digitally empowered communities. In 2018, KCSIC helped assess Metropolitan Community College's internal capacity for innovation to help map a route for innovation practices around a core set of engagement and experiences designed for staff and faculty, with the goal of accelerating the modernization of the institution's people, spaces and places to better meet student and community needs. Notably, KCSIC 1 introduced Design Thinking to the Chancellor's Innovation Council, 2 led an institutional kickoff with a Summer Innovation Summit event that resulted in 36 idea submissions, three of which advanced to a demo day style pitch at the annual In-Service event where one project received an investment of $10,000 and two other projects were awarded internal capacity and resources to launch their concept throughout the District and 4 helped MCC create a process and protocol to support and advance ideas, scaffolding an Innovation in a box Playbook, coordinating Design Thinking workshops for innovation-curious staff/faculty, and providing capacity and training for innovation leaders and project teams, and innovation coaching to help projects and ideas advance.

RethinkEd