A Toolkit for Employers: Connecting Youth & Business
Finding employment in this economy is challenging, but imagine you are a young person who needs a job and has no experience. Then imagine you don’t have the right education and face other obstacles in your life that make getting that first job seem impossible.
While many youth become disconnected from education and employment, with the right interventions and supports, these young people could begin to change the trajectory of their lives. Businesses can play an important role in making this happen and can help these youth get on a pathway to a better future. And businesses benefit from this work, too. Companies already involved in programs that serve this group of youth describe a range of positive outcomes resulting from these activities, including increases in employee engagement, customer loyalty, and employee retention.
A report from Civic Enterprises and America’s Promise Alliance provides an in-depth analysis of these youth, and helps us better understand their backgrounds as well as their visions for the future. This research has revealed that most of these youth are optimistic about their futures, they recognize that getting a good education and job is their own responsibility, and they describe the paths forward that are most likely to help reconnect them. These youth are therefore called “opportunity youth” because they represent tremendous opportunities for employers, communities, and the nation. The research tells us that opportunity youth are motivated to overcome the barriers they face, but they need support.
This toolkit is part of a larger effort, driven by the White House Council for Community Solutions, that focuses on re-engaging opportunity youth. The toolkit was created to guide employers, step-by-step, on working with opportunity youth, with the goals of 1) helping youth find pathways that will lead to productive adulthoods; 2) creating benefits to the businesses that engage opportunity youth; and 3) improving community outcomes which can lead to decreasing the financial burden now experienced by the American taxpayer and the United States.
Click the link below to download the virtual toolkit.
