The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions launched the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) in 2012. In 2019, the OYF Network supports cross-sector partnerships in 27 communities across the United States, with the goal of bringing 6.7 million young people back into education and the workforce.
Equal Measure has partnered with The Aspen Institute Forum to conduct a three-year evaluation of the Opportunity Youth Forum with a focus on systemic shifts. In January 2021, Equal Measure shared Network-wide evaluation findings drawn from data collection among 23 of 27 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2019.
This survey expanded upon data from the 2015-2017 OYF evaluation by exploring more nuanced aspects of collaborative capacity, systems change, and the values that drive these efforts. Insights from the report include:
Grounding Systems Change Efforts in Core Values
Equity, youth-led change, and community power are core values and strategies embedded in the OYF work. Collaboratives are incorporating these values into their infrastructure and processes, and into their efforts to change local systems. Every collaborative is explicitly acknowledging racial equity and community disparities in its planning. In addition to incorporating racial equity as a critical factor in setting the opportunity youth agenda, collaboratives are building diverse partnerships reflective of the communities they serve and making strides to diversify their decision-making ranks.
Collaborative capacity—the infrastructure and processes necessary for the collaborative to carry out its opportunity youth agenda—varies across the Network. While some collaboratives new to the OYF Network are just beginning to establish the processes necessary to carry out their work, others have well-established processes with robust infrastructure.
Shifting Systems to Support Opportunity Youth
The OYF Network serves as a collective of communities working towards systems change to better re-engage and support opportunity youth. A look at how systems change in 2019 varied across different types of collaboratives suggests that larger collaboratives and those with more staff dedicated to opportunity youth efforts — as well as collaboratives and backbones that have focused on opportunity youth for a longer period of time — are more likely to report greater systems change.
The Opportunity Youth Forum: Forging a National Network to Advance Equitable Systems Change
2019 Evaluation Report for the Aspen Institute Opportunity Youth Forum
INFOGRAPHIC: OYF Network by the Numbers