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 City of Seattle and King County are now testing a new housing intervention called the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) project. CMTO tests a more personalized response to the proven idea that place matters for children and that moving young people to neighborhoods of higher opportunity can lead to positive economic, health and education outcomes. This blog will examine the research that informed this project, the promising results that Seattle and King County have demonstrated so far, and how this body of research has equity implications for both program design and research.

The Forum's Senior Director of Field Services Larry Pasti reflects on how to select and effectively implement new programs and strategies in a Youth Today blog post.

Helping to reconnect youth back to education and employment and get them on a path to a successful transition to adulthood that includes economic self-sufficiency, skills that support independent living and improved health, mental health and well-being can be challenging. Youth development stakeholders and beneficiaries (i.e., the youth themselves) describe significant challenges that hinder meaningful improvements in education, employment, health and well-being outcomes.