The City of Tallahassee received the ICMA Community Partnership Award for the category of 50,000 and greater population for the Tallahassee Future Leaders Academy. This award is conferred on local governments for their innovative programs or processes.
The Tallahassee Future Leaders Academy grew out of Tallahassee’s summer youth program in 2014 when Mayor Andrew Gillum saw there was an urgent need for something more structured that would prepare young people to enter the workforce. This academy recruits from throughout the city but prioritizes youth who live in an area called the Promise Zone, where the poverty rate is 52 percent and the overall unemployment rate is a little more than 20 percent, three times the city average.
