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Opportunity Youth Stakeholders Monthly Meeting

Welcome!

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January 23,

2023

In the chat…

  • Name, pronouns, office/organization

AND

  • When is the first time you realized you were a “grown up”? (Or, what moment/ milestone would make you feel like a grown up?)

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Our Time Together Today

  • Welcome, overview
  • DC state of play
  • OY visioning: discussion
  • 2023 aspirations
  • Year-end celebration
  • Open discussion, announcements

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State of Play (Legislative and Administrative Updates)

  • FY23 appropriations - omnibus
    • Dec. 14 - Leahy, Shelby and DeLauro topline agreement
    • Dec. 23 - Continuing Resolution extended
  • White House - Office of Public Engagement
  • EPA - Environmental Justice and Inflation Reduction Act

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EPA Phased in Funding Pipeline for Environmental Justice

Source: EPA, Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights

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Opportunities for Advocates to Engage with EPA

The EPA is looking to advocates and the field as thought partners to lower the barrier to entry when accessing federal funds:

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  • How do we define “partnerships”?
  • How do we define “community-based organization”?
  • What are the most realistic scenarios and “grant size” for three-year time limited grants?
  • What are some ways to ensure that the grantmaking process is inclusive and accessible for communities?

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OY Visioning: Discussion

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A Positive Vision: �We Know What All Young People Need to Transition to Adulthood

  • Agency and autonomy
  • Stable access to safe housing, supportive communities, caring adults, and healthy food
  • High-quality educational opportunities
  • Access to employment, economic mobility, meaning, well-being

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OY Movement Next 10 Years Visioning

  • March - November 2022
  • Calls and meetings of over 40 OY movement leaders (including 10 young leaders)
  • Met to set a future vision, target for success, and goals
  • Vision has multiple potential uses, but began in part because we wanted to have a forward looking vision to talk about as we talk about the last 10 years of work (anniversary of White House Commission on Community Solutions)
  • Final document is framed as an ‘internal movement’ planning and discussion document, not a public call to action, etc.

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OY Movement Next 10 Years Visioning

Vision

In ten years, our society will fully embrace and value youth and young adults in every respect, including supporting all youth, particularly those most excluded from opportunities, to have equitable access to education, employment and other pursuits of their choice. Young people themselves will have power over the forces that impact them, and lead the charge in creating the future they desire.

Specific Targets

By 2033, reduce the number of opportunity youth 50%, by reconnecting 3 million opportunity youth to jobs and education, and reduce racial and other inequities in rates of youth disconnection.

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By 2033, Our Goals Are To: (for more detail on each of these, see final document)

  • Institutionalize the Power for Change with Young People
  • Increase the Social Connection, Belonging and Well-Being of OY
  • Change Society’s Beliefs, Perceptions and Create a More Positive Narrative About OY
  • Increase the Focus on Equity, Particularly Racial Equity, in Both Processes and Outcomes for OY
  • Ensure OY’s Basic Needs Are Met, and Barriers to Opportunity Removed
  • Improve Access to Education Opportunities and Credential Completion
  • Increase Economic Security and Create More Well-Paying and Meaningful Employment Opportunities and Business Opportunities that Support Wealth Building
  • Increase Public and Private Investment in Youth and Youth Programs

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OY Movement Next 10 Years Visioning

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The visioning process raised some questions from participants, including:

  • How will we know if we are accomplishing the goals / making progress? Do we need measures?
  • How do we turn goals into plans? Who in the movement would take responsibility for acting on which goals?

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Why Now?

  • Pre-pandemic conversations about increasing impact of advocacy with/on behalf of OY
  • Significant shared advocacy regarding federal pandemic-recovery legislation yielded few wins for OY (or young people as a whole) → fate of young people connected, and not
  • Transitions within organizations opens window of opportunity, chance to reset on vision, build configurations that will yield more impact

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How Broad Should Our North Star Be?

OY Appropriations

Youth Workforce Policies

Juvenile

Justice, Child Welfare, Homeless, Disability Policies

All Youth

A “Youth Transitions” Agenda?

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Activities

Outcomes

Solution

Launch a Movement for Young Adults that:

  • Creates, with young people, a positive narrative
  •  Gathers data, aligns research
  • Builds grassroots, place-based enthusiasm
  • Implements a shared advocacy strategy; growing group of partners
  • Grassroots and grasstops enthusiasm for new narrative, and for young adults 
  • More and varied depictions of young adults
  • Policies reflect new narrative, more cohesive vision, transformed systems, better outcomes

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Young adults have equitable access to a variety of pathways into adulthood

Root Causes

Problem Statement

Apathy and lack of vision around the prospects for young adults

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”

Policies are insufficient or counterproductive 🡪 “nothing works,” “nothing can be done”

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We’ve Transformed Systems & Outcomes Before

Examples: Early childhood education, homelessness

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Common elements

  • Shared data points
  • Shared messages
  • Infrastructure for federal and state work
  • Years of coordinated investment  

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Movement for Young Adults:�Four Buckets of Work

Narrative Change

    • Cohere existing efforts
    • Get traction for new, positive narrative

Research & Data

    • Shared research agenda
    • Key data points that drive policy change

Grassroots & Coalitions

    • Place-based advocacy
    • Coalitions aligned & growing

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Policy Advocacy

    • Shared agenda, strategy
    • Systems transformed, outcomes improve

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We Know What Needs to Be Done – �But We Are Not Seeing Hoped-For Results

Across our society, we enlist evidence-based interventions for young adults in use around the world - but they’re not at scale

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We’ve tried many avenues to effect change in the Opportunity Youth (and broader transition-age youth) spaces

  • Popular strategies now:
    • Inside-outside
    • Institutional reform
  • We have not seen hoped-for results: number of OY are about the same, youth homelessness growing, K-12/college enrollment shrinking, burgeoning youth mental health crisis, growing racial (and generational) wealth gaps
  • No policy response: Young adults not included in recovery legislation
  • No data: Little real-time data to connect investments and interventions to impact

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If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu:�Theory of the Case 🡪 �Theory of Change

We need to change perceptions…

  • Within media
  • Among policymakers
  • Across coalitions

Then, scale solutions

This is a win for…

  • Young people
  • Employers 
  • The economy

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What We Can Create Together

  • A forum for creating deeper, shared collaboration
  • A sturdy container for the good work already underway
  • A means to tackle gaps together (e.g. messages and data points)
  • A base to build upon as we grow the tent

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Discussion

  • How will we know if we are accomplishing the goals / making progress? Do we need measures?
  • How do we turn goals into plans? Who in the movement would take responsibility for acting on which goals?
  • What gifts can you/your organization bring to the table to achieve this vision?
  • What resources do we need collectively to make our vision(s) a reality?
  • Will you commit to investing some time and energy to build something? Who else needs to be at the table?

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2023 Aspirations

  • Youth Caucus
  • Youth Day on the Hill
  • Deeper engagement with White House, agencies and other policymakers

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2022 Gratitudes: In the Chat, or Start Adding Pictures to Slides

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Add your photos here

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Add your photos here

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Resources and Links

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Thank you!!!

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Stay in touch!

Thomas Showalter thomas.showalter@nyec.org

Jo Ann Paanio joann@forumfyi.org

Gerod Blue gerod@forumfyi.org

Kathy Tran ktran@clasp.org