Young People Can Lead as “We Meet the Moment.” But, They Need Our Country to Invest in Them

Stephen Patrick

Bringing OY into COVID-19 recovery

An abbreviated version of this blog ran in the Aspen Times.  

There is no doubt that the world has changed. Covid-19 is having, and will have, an unprecedented impact on the long-term physical, emotional, and financial health and wellbeing of nearly all Americans, including the rising generation. Young people who have grown up during the time of the Great Recession are now left to navigate a second unprecedented economic catastrophe. Young people of color from places of long-time disinvestment, a history of racist systems, and concentrated poverty are starting from even further back than most. Meeting our country’s near-term needs and achieving the long-term vision for the America we want, will fall woefully short if we do not invest in our country’s greatest and most under-utilized natural asset: the next generation. At the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, we partner with over a dozen foundations to implement the national Opportunity Youth Forum/Fund (OYF), where we fund and work with community networks and opportunity youth – 16-24-year-olds – who are not connected to education or employment. At the start of 2020, we were celebrating ongoing annual declines in the number of disconnected young people in our country. After years of coalition work – scaling best practice, advocating for systems change, and investing in youth-led efforts – the number had reached an all-time low of less than 5 million opportunity youth according to Measure of America. While that is still a significant number, we could actually envision a point in the future where America would have second chance opportunities for every single young person who was out of school or work and wanted a better life. But that is no longer the case. The latest unemployment data tells us that the estimated number of young adults in our country who are no longer connected to school or work has likely more than tripled – with some staggering estimates putting the number at 18 million or more.