Equal Measure’s evaluation report for the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions looks at the trends from the past five years (2019–2023) on how collaboratives in the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) network connect youth and young adults to education and career pathways.
The network represents more than 920,000 opportunity youth in OYF communities. Across the 40 collaboratives, over 11 percent of youth and young people were not connected to school or work. The report details progress and challenges in systems change and collaborative capacity—the infrastructure and processes for cross-sector partners to work together.
Improved Youth Connection
The youth disconnection rate—the percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds not in school and not working in OYF communities—has nearly returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Many factors affect youth disconnection, such as local job opportunities, geography, and structural racism. Local collaborative and broader community efforts can counteract these barriers.
Preliminary findings from Equal Measure show that collaboratives that reported greater evidence of systems change tended to have lower youth disconnection rates.
Collaborative Capacity and Systems Change
Changing systems takes time, and collaboratives continue to have nonlinear paths to local systems change. Half of the collaboratives showed growth and decline over the five-year period of the report.
However, Equal Measure found a continued, consistent relationship between collaborative capacity and collaboratives’ ability to improve local systems.
Collaborative capacity was particularly strong in leadership, planning, and convening power from 2019–2023. Local collaboratives also reported public policy change as a focus in 2023, resulting in the highest level of activity in five years.
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Project Team Members:
- Jennifer Thompson
- Samantha Rivera Joseph
- Carise Mitch
- Roseleni Ortiz Ramos
- Robert Roach
- Giselle Saleet