Jafaar Bilal dropped out of high school at 15 to make money to buy the latest designer fashions.

He ran errands for his neighbors in the Bronx and ended up at a warehouse in the Hunts Point neighborhood, where he lifted heavy boxes and made deliveries for $10 an hour. “I’d be exhausted,” he recalled. “I don’t like manual labor, at all.”

Now Mr. Bilal, 21, is getting a chance for something better through an innovative program that aims to reach disconnected young people who do not have a high school diploma or languish in dead-end jobs, if they are employed at all. Called Y Roads, it has enrolled more than 800 New York City residents since 2013 for classes for the high school equivalency diploma and other services, including job training and placement and counseling…

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