Happy New Year! After a long and difficult 2020, the Forum for Youth Investment is committed to working with our partners, clients, and funders to build back together in new ways to meet the moment. Though the challenges we face may be great, we also see incredible opportunities and potential to change the odds that all young people are ready for college, work, and life.

Edutopia, a trusted source shining a spotlight on what works in education, recently released a new collection of compelling videos that connect what we know about the science of learning and development with practical applications for educators and providers in all youth-serving settings. The collection highlights exemplary out-of-school time programs in four communities and examines the best practices at work. While the videos were filmed pre-COVID, the strategies and themes are more important than ever.

In recent years, communities caught the collective impact fever and established robust cross-sector collaborations to improve young people’s educational outcomes. Interest was booming. Businesses signed up. Expectations were high. What does research tell us about how these efforts have fared?

The potential for thriving is universal, but so too is the existence of adversity. Young people can overcome adversities, but the ease of doing so is not equally shared. Opportunity structures – in schools, communities, and society – make it easier for some youth to avoid or buffer the impacts of adversity than others.
A new report from the Readiness Projects partners, Thriving, Robust Equity, and Transformative Learning & Development, speaks to the needs of all youth, as every youth can benefit from robust approaches to thriving, equity, and learning.

Recently, the Forum for Youth Investment, the National Urban League, and the American Institutes for Research united to start the Readiness Projects, an effort to devote time, resources, and perspectives to stimulate equity-driven solutions and policies.

To further this effort, the partners have launched a new blog on Medium, Changing the Odds for Youth: A Community Dialogue on What it Will Take, to start a critical conversation on what we must do to upend inequities and build back better and broader together.