At the end of July, the Forum convened state teams from Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, and New York, comprised of youth and families with lived experience and systems leaders in K-12, higher education, workforce, health and human services, juvenile justice, and child welfare to set a bold strategy to improve outcomes for youth. The event marked the launch of the Building Ecosystems Statewide for Thriving (BEST) Youth Initiative, a three-year project in which state system leaders and youth with lived experience will co-design innovative solutions to the states’ most urgent challenges to improve youth outcomes in education, work, and life.  

The youth development ecosystem is highly committed to unlocking the tremendous potential in all youth. However, it is fragmented into distinct systems. Recent outside pressures and internal shifts in youth development are compelling a critical dialogue about how the ecosystem can use this moment to better serve all youth in need.

Specifically, states are contemplating how to support children living in poverty and the nearly five million youth disconnected from both education and employment.  According to Measure of America’s 2023 Report, the number of young people disconnected from school and work, known as Opportunity Youth, has increased by 13.1 percent between 2019 and 2021. The study points out the long-term negative outcomes for young people as well as widening opportunity gaps for youth with disabilities and Black, Latino, and Native American youth.  

While these numbers seem bleak, there is hope for a path forward to reconnecting youth to education, work, and community-based programming, taking a youth-centered, outcomes-based approach. The BEST Youth Initiative seeks to provide states the opportunity to bring together at least three youth-serving state systems to develop a shared strategic roadmap; to engage multiple stakeholders in the development of the strategy; and to collaborate, learn and support other state efforts in their implementation of their strategy. This three-year initiative is built to ensure states develop the necessary capacity to implement and sustain efforts to reach their collective goals to transform and align systems to achieve real results.      

There is a precedent for reversing the trend of increased disengagement from education and work. After the great recession of 2008, the number of opportunity youth decreased annually until the pandemic. In nearly a decade before the pandemic, the nation witnessed almost a quarter or a one million, drop in the number of opportunity youth.   However, as with many of the challenges facing our nation’s youth, the pandemic exacerbated conditions, disrupting young people’s pathway to thrive. 

The BEST Youth Initiative seeks to reverse this trend. Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, and New York are counting on it.

“We are excited for this opportunity to collaborate across state agencies and share best practices with other selected states in order to create a more effective, nimble youth-serving ecosystem,”

said Dr. Meghan Stidd, director of Community Programs at the Colorado Department of Human Services and the Colorado BEST Team Lead. State youth-serving system leaders interested in learning about the innovative solutions that come out of the BEST Youth Initiative can sign up for our monthly e-newsletter.