The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions’ Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) brings together local collaboratives to reconnect opportunity youth to education and employment. Equal Measure’s evaluation focuses on the network’s capacities and efforts to change systems for opportunity youth.
Communities served by the OYF network span the United States across urban, rural, and tribal regions. This nationwide network of collaboratives—each grounded deeply in their community’s place and context—creates a strong, diverse cohort of learning opportunities and a national perspective on improving education and employment outcomes for opportunity youth.
AREAS OF FOCUS. Collaboratives prioritized youth involved in or experiencing: Justice system (63%); Foster system (59%); Homelessness (56%); Boys & men of color (50%). Collaboratives focused “a lot” on connecting youth to: Workforce (61%); Postsecondary education (42%); High school or equivalency (39%). SIZE. Collaboratives included partners from various sectors: Higher education (97%); Community-based organizations (94%); Government (82%); K-12 education (76%). Network Median: 14 partners. Range: 6-120 partners.
Based on 2021 data from the collaboratives, these systems changes emerged as areas exhibiting growth or as key priorities as OYF moves into its next decade of work:
- Data Use: Data and learning was the highest rated collaborative capacity, and collaboratives have seen substantial growth in data capacity and data use for systems change. In particular, the network has demonstrated growth in using common data definitions and in sharing data within and across systems.
- Public Policy: The OYF shows promising signs of growth to influence policy, including raising public awareness to youth-related issues, engaging young people in advocacy, and hiring staff with policy and advocacy training.
- Funding Changes: The network continues to pursue systems changes through funding, with collaboratives shifting funding practices and distributing resources to create more opportunities for opportunity youth.
- Equity: More than three-quarters of collaboratives reported that planning for opportunity youth work included explicit acknowledgment of racial equity and/or community-specific disparities, including evidence of healing from trauma.
Equal Measure conducts an annual assessment to understand the Opportunity Youth Forum’s collaborative capacity, systems change efforts, and core values. Each year offers an opportunity to uplift new learning that informs the direction of initiatives for the network. Learn more about our partnership, and see our data brief that highlights positive trends and promising practices from our deep dive of the OYF network’s data use.
