PROJECT SUMMARY: This research proposes to address upstream drivers of youth violence in East Oakland, California. Oakland is a city of roughly 400,000 people with extreme geographic and racial disparities in economic opportunity and health outcomes. Working with a local youth empowerment organization, East Oakland Youth Development Center, the team will identify, implement, and evaluate a sustainable and scalable model for reducing youth violence through summer jobs as a function of increasing youth’s social capital, civic engagement, and access to livable-wage jobs. Using a waitlist-control experimental design, the team will measure social capital and civic engagement, school or college attendance, graduation rates, employment, income, community disadvantage (a contextual factor), and violent delinquency. The evidence generated from this research will be valuable to communities seeking greater investment from their local governments.