Stakeholder Involvement

Business leaders and educators must create meaningful, successful, and long lasting partnerships to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life. Collaboration between business and education can ensure that students graduate high school equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in the workplace, post-secondary education and life.

On any given day, scores of young people with limited individual and social capital are simultaneously struggling to exit some systems and enter others: foster care, residential treatment centers, higher education, mental health programs, gainful employment.

Across the country, too few youth leave high school ready for success. Community statistics and conditions vary, but there is no community across the country that is doing well enough by its children and youth. There is a need to do more. More to the point, there is a need to do better – to make bolder commitments, to create broader ownership and partnerships, to ensure greater returns on public and private investments.

The Forum for Youth Investment convened a group of key stakeholders in Louisville, KY at the Neighborhood House in an effort to assist these community and state leaders with aligning their youth efforts into a big picture framework.

On September 9, Karen Pittman, Merita Irby, Nicole Yohalem, Nalini Ravindranath and Blake Dohrn attended the America's Promise Alliance Featured Communities Action Forum.

On July 24 at the New Orleans Convention Center, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) held a session for 150 legislators entitled ‘Investing in Our Future: The Status of America’s Youth’. Panelists included Elizabeth Gaines of the Forum, Senator Appel of Iowa, Representative Roberts of Colorado and Representative Walker of Connecticut.

This youth council was formed to examine issues of importance to youth, such as: education, employment, strategies to increase youth participation in government, safe environments for youth, substance abuse, emotional and physical health, foster care, poverty, homelessness, and youth access to services.

The VTSP Youth Advisory Council (YAC) is made up of one peer elected member from each VTLSP School. The council meets three times per year and each member must commit to two major safety projects in the school year. Sponsored by the Vermont Teen Leadership Safety Program.