Our Piece of the Pie
Our Piece of the Pie®, Inc. (OPP®) empowers youth with the key competencies needed to overcome barriers and succeed in education and employment.
When asked why her work at Our Piece of the Pie (OPP) in Hartford matters, Tajah Ryder’s eyes well with tears of pride. “A couple days ago, I moved my first young person into college,” she says. Tajah is a Life Skills Specialist in the LAUNCH Program, a collaboration with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCF). She provides mentorship, guidance, and goal setting to young people on her caseload to advance their personal, academic, and workforce readiness.
“I’ve been working with her for about three years.” Tajah says, “She was very quiet, kind of shy, and would just observe things. Eventually, she started engaging in the life skills workshops, connecting with me, and then I was able to understand her interests. She definitely created a bond with me and our staff. And we slowly encouraged her to engage with her peers, because she would tend to be a little introverted, and then, she just blossomed.”
Tajah built an individualized plan for this young woman, as she does for all the young people on her caseload at OPP, to provide academic support, post-secondary exploration, job readiness training, and internships aligned with her interests.
Then, together, they set goals, built timelines, and structured steps to accomplish them. She says, “I’m a partner in creating that plan, letting them be in the driver’s seat to narrate what that story is to get those goals met. For my young people in foster care, I think they’ve been very used to the system speaking for them, and it’s very important that they feel empowered to narrate their own story and to be the social change agents they need in their own lives.”
With Tajah’s support, that young woman “went from just quietly observing in the leadership board meetings to running our statewide meetings for the DCF Commissioner and running the statewide youth summits. She told me that a few years back, she didn’t see herself even going to college.” Now, DCF is funding a full scholarship for the young woman to attend the University of New Haven to pursue her dream of working in criminal justice.
Tajah reflects on this transformative relationship, saying, “Seeing her build her confidence, watching her excitement, watching her just feel so proud of these opportunities that are coming to her fills me with so much joy. She’s like, ‘I don’t know why people keep asking me to host this and lead this.’ And I say, ‘You know exactly why, because you’re a natural-born leader.’”