BOSTON, MA – [March 26, 2019] – Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit that accelerates the alignment and transformation of the American workforce and education systems, today announced a new effort to expand educational and career opportunities for youth who are Black, Latinx, or experiencing poverty in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As the nation determines how the future of work will impact young people, the need to address systemic inequities in education and career outcomes grows increasingly urgent. Building Equitable Pathways seeks to provide youth with the information and support to make informed choices for their futures—especially those young people who have too often been denied access to these key resources.

“JFF will leverage our decades of leadership and expertise in strengthening workforce and education systems in the U.S. with a lens on equity,” says Amy Loyd, associate vice president of JFF’s Pathways to Prosperity initiative. “We must equip all young people with the tools to move seamlessly from education to careers. JFF is thrilled that the foundation chose us to lead this work to strengthen national systems of high-quality college and career pathways for youth who are Black, Latinx, or experiencing poverty.”

JFF will lead and learn with seven intermediary organizations that serve diverse populations of youth across the country, including Boys and Girls Club of Greater Memphis, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Career Connect Washington, CareerWise Colorado, HERE to HERE, Rush University Medical Center, and YouthForce NOLA. Through partnership and collaboration, JFF will support each organization individually and collectively to share, co-create, improve upon, and codify best practices and exciting innovations in the role of intermediary organizations focused on building equitable pathways.

Through this grant, JFF and its partners will create a collection of resources aimed to help build the capacity of the national field of intermediaries to design and implement equitable pathways. Intermediaries are critical to the cross-sector collaboration required for building systems and scaling work-based learning. They play a key role in bringing together leaders in K-12 and postsecondary education, industry, and government to develop partnerships, strategies, and funding to develop college and career pathways.

This work continues through September 2020.

About JFF and Pathways to Prosperity

Jobs for the Future is a national nonprofit that drives transformation in the American workforce and education systems. For 35 years, JFF has led the way in designing innovative and scalable solutions that create access to economic advancement for all. Join us as we build a future that works.

Launched in 2012, Pathways to Prosperity is a joint initiative of JFF and the Harvard Graduate School of Education that seeks to ensure that many more young people complete high school, attain postsecondary credentials with currency in the labor market, and launch careers while leaving open the prospect of further education.