Opportunity Youth: Disenfranchised Young People

• Strong links among education, training, and the job market. Evidence suggests
that programs that connect training to identifiable opportunities in the
local labor market — career pathways approaches — are more likely to
achieve strong employment outcomes. Year Up designs its training curricula
with input from corporate partners and gets employer commitments to sponsor
and provide on-the-job training. Successful high school equivalency or
developmental education programs have incorporated career pathway approaches.
• Youth development approaches. Successful programs address the developmental
needs of young people, many of whom are facing difficult family and
life circumstances. Youth development approaches include offering young
people leadership opportunities within the program and the opportunity to develop
trusted relationships with adults through mentoring. Features like these
are included in the programs of Year Up and ChalleNGe.
• Comprehensive support services. Successful programs also address young
people’s barriers to participation. These barriers may include a young person’s
difficulties in meeting basic needs such as transportation, child care, and
food. Other forms of support may include connecting young people to physical
or mental health care. For example, Year Up has social workers on staff to
provide counseling and connect young people to the resources they need.
Youth Villages’ Transitional Living program provides intensive case management
in weekly sessions.
• Support after placement. Support after participants are placed in either employment
or education has been another feature of successful programs including
Job Corps, GED Bridge to Health and Business, ChalleNGe, and
Year Up.
Findings from Implementation Studies
While the impact components of these evaluations help reveal the programs’ potential
to improve outcomes in education, employment, or other areas, implementation studies can
shed light on aspects of program delivery that facilitate success or impede program implementation.
These findings can be useful to programs and funders seeking to understand how best to
support effective program implementation or expand a program to a larger scale. A review of
the implementation studies cited above yielded some common themes:
• Outreach and enrollment practices can limit the populations that programs
serve. Implementation studies can provide considerable information on the
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