A World of Opportunity for LA Youth

Youth Economic Advancement (sponsored by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

After 30 years of working on youth employment initiatives across LA, the US, and the world, some of our biggest takeaways are the sheer lack of context most young people have about their own options. As we've worked closer with schools, it became clear that while introducing work, entrepreneurship, leadership and engagement to students in school is vital, very few in the education community understand what the local economy looks like, what pathways exist, or how to prepare young people to navigate beyond school. Essentially, educators are charged with preparing students without context themselves. With this initiate we aim to correct this, establishing stronger connective tissue for the ecosystem. Addressing this crucial gap has a profound impact on our ability as a city and community to ensure our young people collectively have the greatest possible opportunities for success in life, love and career.

Exploring Your Potential (EYP) proposes a campaign to contextualize the world of work for students and educators throughout Los Angeles (LA). The program includes the distribution of three tools that aim to inform, educate, and gather new data on the state of workforce readiness education. The World of Opportunity Guide is a beautifully illustrated guide that covers education and career pathways available to students. The Your Path To Success Survey aims to provide students with valuable insights into potential career paths that align with their goals. Exploring Your Potential feature lessons for classrooms will encourage schools to adopt more comprehensive programming and strategies for educating students for their future education and career options. A summative report will be shared to highlight the initiatives, sponsors, data and findings. Overall, this program aims to provide invaluable resources and tools to ALL middle and high school students and educators in LA to help them contextualize the world of work and identify career pathways that align with their interests and goals.

The World of Opportunity Initiative will bring innovation and engagement to the education system, aligning schools with industries and opportunities for work in and around LA. Short term impact includes distribution of educational tools to all LAUSD public and charter schools. Long term impact includes driving support for all LA schools and expansion of resources to more schools in CA and the US. This initiative will serve as a powerful case study to the nation, potentially affecting additional funding and support for students for years to come.

EYP has worked with LA county schools for the past three years (15 collectively) to drive millions in new project funding, building scalable and sustainable CTE systems to engage students in high school and middle school CTE pathways. EYP aims to provide exposure and context about opportunities in SoCal, while inspiring and training school leaders to expand access to impactful programming. The World of Opportunity Guide will be a new resource, building on 30 years of experience. EYP's Exploring Your Potential curriculum has educated 30,000 students in 40 colleges and has now been adapted to K12 to prepare students for the world of work. The Path to Success survey has shown positive results with 12,000 students. EYP tools consistently result in 87% of students feeling better about their potential, 80+% discovering more options, and 68% being more committed to education.