The Rêver in Residence Experience introduces students to entrepreneurship pathways with grant support, mentorship from business professionals, and an individualized plan in which they develop their business concepts and pitch their ideas to prepare them for launch. By helping youth equitably access the first rung of the entrepreneurship ladder, they will see more innovative, needs-focused solutions to issues their students currently experience, and work to close opportunity gaps so that future business leadership reflects the demographics of their community.
OnenIneFive seeks to empower Indiana youth with lived mental health experience with exposure to and practice with careers in mental health and improve outcomes for the 20% of youth most impacted by the lack of affordable mental health care.
The “Building Youth Supporters Through Training” program, a partnership between OneInFive and the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, will allow up to eight Indianapolis-area youth with lived mental health experience exposure to and practice with careers in mental health.
This program will establish a paid practicum for youth while they gain experience as a peer supporter, towards the end of certification as peer mental health recovery specialists. Youth in the paid practicum will provide support to their peers within the school district, share experiences with supervising educators and solve real-time challenges, and be a part of a cohort of other students in the program.
“Students in OneInFive not only work with younger students, but also make informational videos regarding mental health that are shown in classrooms. OneInFive has helped students gain confidence while having fun! OneInFive has been a great asset to our school.” ~School social worker, Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township
Learn more about OneInFive and the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township.
OneGoal is shifting the paradigm for how 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds think about what’s possible beyond high school. OneGoal provides high school students – predominantly Black, Latinx, and/or first-generation – with high-quality, equity-focused advising for college and other postsecondary pathways at scale. Their program was created to address the systemic barriers that high schools often face to provide high-touch, culturally relevant advising and long-term support to students as they pursue their postsecondary education. Since their founding in Chicago in 2007, OneGoal has expanded to reach students facing barriers to postsecondary education nationwide, currently working in six regions throughout the U.S.
Many believe that career success is achieved by following a single path: graduating high school, enrolling in a 4-year college (often while amassing debt), and landing a good job. OneGoal in New York increasingly recognizes the limitations of this one-size-fits-all model. Despite the growing number and variety of career-oriented, non-degree pathways, options such as trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and tech boot camps are far less visible and well-vetted than colleges and universities. They will create novel digital tools and advising services rooted in robust research and informed by student input gathered over the next year to ensure the thousands of students they serve in New York City public high schools have every opportunity to pursue their career aspirations. They will set learners up for success by helping them navigate the vast landscape of non-degree programs and make informed decisions.
MindSpark Learning believes that education is the greatest and most foundational problem-solving mechanism that exists in society. MindSpark programs deliver extraordinary professional learning experiences for educators, the community, and industry partners who then take their new skills back to the classroom and beyond. The STAR HARBOR Education Foundation mission is to “advance the space industry through the inspiration, education, and cultivation of the next generation technical workforce.” This is accomplished by developing innovative workforce development programming serving a continuum spanning K-12 through postgraduate education including the STAR HARBOR Academy, the world’s first immersive and fully comprehensive public spaceflight training campus and cutting-edge research and development for emerging technologies in the space industry.
To raise awareness and deliver awareness and training for grades 6-14, as well as teacher development, both organizations are partnering with Gateway Global American Youth & Business Alliance Academies, an innovative model that is currently the only organization in the U.S. accredited to train and credential in GEOINT (Geospatial Intelligence) at the high school level. To accomplish this, the solution is to scale this innovative program beginning with a pre-apprenticeship program to apprenticeship delivering industry-recognized credentials with participating pilot K-12 schools.
The BroadStreet Institute is a unique, virtual, hands-on data internship that empowers women of color to build technical skills in data and leadership. They are proud to play a role in increasing diversity in data science. Interns come to BroadStreet for work experience. BroadStreet serves as a bridge that spans between college and that first job as a data scientist, a process that usually takes around 4 years. They want to build up their Community Data Project and pair up interns with collaborating nonprofit organizations. In the U.S., there are over 30,000 nonprofits working to improve community health. Nonprofit organizations need data to bring in donations, grants, and funding. Often, the places most in need of funding do not have any data resources. Their big idea is to connect their dedicated team of data interns with communities in need. They believe that this will help their interns to build data skills, make important professional connections, increase representation of women of color in data science and leadership, all while serving nonprofits doing important work in communities.
We believe that the future of high school embraces a blended learning approach leveraging the best of an in-person high school community with the best of online instruction. We partner with the top online learning providers (like Bard Early College, Coursello, and nXu) to offer courses in their areas of expertise through our one-stop-shop platform. Our course offerings include dual credit/college options, hard-to-staff subject areas (like math, foreign language, and computer science), and a variety of high-interest electives. Students engage in live, synchronous classes taught by engaging, online teachers from our course partners. Since we curate and vet the best course partners across the country, school districts get multiple partnerships in one.
This fall, Stepmojo will serve more than 2,700 students from across 17 public school systems through 25+ high-interest, high-quality courses. Our goal is to provide students everywhere with more equitable access to exceptional content and teachers – giving them more agency to pursue personal interests, further academic goals, and explore potential college and career paths.
“Stepmojo’s innovative, hybrid model allows us to go beyond the walls of our buildings and staffing limitations to offer our students what they want and deserve: a wide array of rigorous, interesting courses that they’re really excited to take.” – Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, Dr. Deb Gist
SkillUp is a non-profit that connects workers with the right tools, resources and support, so they can make confident career shifts, find quality living-wage jobs, and position themselves for promising career growth. Their mission is to provide a guided and supported path to ensure every worker gains equity and dignity in the workforce through access to high-opportunity and quality employment. SkillUp has numerous testimonials speaking to the impact they’ve had on the lives of individuals across the country.
Level Up Dallas leverages SkillUp’s insights into career exploration for adults and deploys it for students grades 10-14 (ages 16-20). They’ll do that via a four-pronged strategy. First, they’ll inform students grades 10-14 about career opportunities specifically available to them. They put a kernel into the minds of young Americans of an alternate pathway that could change the trajectory of their futures. Second, they’ll help students grades 10-14 navigate the complexities of finding the right opportunity uniquely suited to them. Third, they’ll help connect students grades 10-14 to trusted, vetted skilling programs or jobs available to them. They connect students to internships, or to real jobs, paying living wages, with employers willing to help upskill them – and pay for the upskilling – into career-advancing jobs. And fourth, they’ll support students along their early career journey, offering coaching on specific issues pertinent to their career journey, or mentoring from staff at partner companies, or successful graduates.
Many schools and college partners find it difficult to engage employers to provide internships for students. These WBL experiences are critical to prepare students for careers. Programs, like IBM’s PTECH, have demonstrated the value of employer sponsored pathways that span high school to college to career.Global Grid for Learning has developed a model for virtual internships to allow employers and schools to deliver these experiences to more students.
The Certified School Passport Administrator virtual internship will build students’ skills in IT for enterprise software applications and prepare them for in-demand jobs in information technology. The CSPA program complements existing IT pathways and provides a real-world experience to see enterprise IT in operation. As a partner for the deployment of IT certification pathways from major vendors, such as Google and Coursera, they will build digital WBL experiences to complement training certificates across a variety of pathways.
NuPaths will partner with the South Central PA Workforce Development Board’s (SCPa Works) Next Generation Industry Partnership and Harrisburg University to create a Cybersecurity Careers Ecosystem that addresses the lack of cybersecurity education and career pathways. They will formalize a cybersecurity career pathway using middle school technology career exploration, high school pre-apprenticeship training (with IT industry credentials), and post-high school “earn-and-learn” apprenticeships for underserved inner-city students from Harrisburg, Lancaster, and York, PA. IT apprenticeships are a new approach to talent development that are rapidly gaining momentum. Both IT employers and those heavily invested in IT are considering apprenticeship as an innovative approach to filling critical cybersecurity positions. As one of only a few cybersecurity registered pre-apprenticeship programs in Pennsylvania, NuPaths is uniquely positioned to help lead the creation of a Cybersecurity Ecosystem.
NuPaths, an IT and tech pre-apprenticeship and workforce development training provider, was co-founded by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) in 2018. Their mission is to: “Prepare our students to perform specific entry-level roles in Information Technology that are well-paying and in-demand.” In the past 4 years, a total of 452 youth and adult students have enrolled in NuPaths’ programs, earning more than 775 industry-recognized IT certifications and 1,750 college credits. Of students who successfully complete a program, 82% are employed in an IT-related apprenticeship, job, or are enrolled in a college degree program within 6 months of completing a program.
“The growing number of technology jobs shows us that new, innovative approaches like earn-and-learn apprenticeship models are needed to fill this growing need. NuPaths curriculum has been designed to directly align with the required technical skills needed by tomorrow’s IT workforce and apprentices.” -Andy Petroski, President, NuPaths
The need for affordable housing is growing and housing authorities and developers receive federal resources to address the need. These resources generate employment and contracting opportunities for low-income residents. Yet, finding competent and reliable contractors is challenging. NISE links federal resources to low-income youth through the provision of paid work experiences, guidance in housing-related social enterprise start up, financial capability and adaptive skills. There are several factors that make NISE a groundbreaking solution. First, its target population, which are low-income youth living in assisted housing in a particular neighborhood. Second, youth gain work experience in the housing industry earning a living wage while creating their own housing-related social enterprise which provides long-term career stability. Additionally, each youth will receive a comprehensive youth assessment to ensure school success, exposure to careers in the housing industry, training in financial capability, social enterprise creation and start-up capital through USI’s Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), connection to real-life contracting opportunities, and counseling to address trauma, social and emotional barriers that could impact success. NISE is innovative as it creates a pathway for youth to obtain knowledge, social, and economic capital while promoting youth entrepreneurship.
