Opportunity Youth Forum
The OYF is a national network of cross-cutting ‘family of programs’ – structured to systematically create opportunities for thriving youth by working at multiple systems levels
About Opportunity Youth Forum
The Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) is a national network dedicated to the development and success of young people, 16 to 24 years old, with a focus on those who’ve been the least well-served by the education, workforce and other systems meant to support them. Nationwide, this includes over 4 million young people who are completely disconnected from both education and the workforce, and an estimated 12 million additional young people who are off track to a thriving life, and in serious danger of disconnection. In total, this is at least 40% of all young people in the United States. To address this challenge OYF has set a ten year goal to increase youth educational and workforce attainment, and reduce youth disconnection in OYF communities by 500,000 young people.
The Opportunity Youth Forum was formed in 2012 at the Aspen Institute following the work of the White House Council for Community Solutions. Our values include centering the communities most impacted by youth disconnection, supporting youth-led change efforts, and advancing high impact collaborative, cross-sector solutions that increase youth education and workforce outcomes and connecting young people to supportive systems so they can thrive throughout their lives (learn more about our work advancing approaches that build Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose for young people).
Structure & Family of Programs
The OYF family of programs is structured to systematically create opportunities for thriving youth by working at multiple levels. These include:
- 40+ local place-based collaboratives, working with 900 local organizations that serve over 200,000 young people annually.
- A growing program of state-level networks, based on initial success in policy and funding change in Texas
- National strategies focused on policy change, communications and narrative change, and national philanthropic support for OY
- Affiliate networks, focused on specific youth issues:
- Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose: state and organization level work to improve programs and systems working with youth
- Justice in Community: reforming the youth and young adult justice systems
- Fresh Tracks: building youth leadership through outdoor engagement
- Creative Youth Development: youth engagement and careers in the arts and creative domains
What We Do
The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions supports OYF members by offering a range of supports, including: regrants (with $50M regranted directly to partnerships to date), technical assistance, twice yearly in-person convenings, communities of practice, reports and other learning opportunities, and providing data and assessment support to communities.
We focus on supporting opportunity youth and preventing youth disconnection not only because it is the right thing to do to secure this country’s future, but because it also makes economic sense. 8 million young adults aged 16-24 live in OYF communities, and over 3 million of them struggle to complete education or find work; 900,000 are completely disconnected from both education and work. The economic cost of the 900,000 disconnected youth in OYF communities is estimated at $17 billion each year. The personal benefits to young people for completing education and gaining decent wage jobs is well known, worth at least $500,000 in increased income over a person’s lifetime, not to mention improved health outcomes and other benefits.
Our Impact
The OYF has set for itself the goal of reducing the number of opportunity youth in its communities by 500,000 (a 50% reduction) in the next ten years – that’s hundreds of thousands of the least well-served young people with educational credentials and good jobs. This is an ambitious goal, but the movement for OY has seen large reductions in youth disconnection before: in our first 10 years, we saw a nation-wide reduction of 1 million in disconnected youth. To make our new goal happen, our network operates at scale for massive change:
- 230,000 youth received supports from OYF partners in 2024, and 60,000 disconnected youth were connected to education and jobs.
- Because OYF partners connect opportunity youth to education and jobs, these communities saw economic savings and benefits of $440 million in 2024 alone.
- OYF communities are on track to reduce youth disconnection by 50% by 2033, attaining to date a 14% reduction in disconnection (or 150,000 fewer OY) in just the first three years.
Opportunity Youth Forum
Areas of Work
Grounded in the belief that those closest to challenges are closest to the solutions, our work focuses on several interconnected programs, initiatives, and partnerships, that expand opportunity and local community-led change through place-based partnerships, statewide & national networks, thought-leadership, and organizing.
Opportunity Youth Forum Initiatives
Thought-Leadership I Youth Opportunity I Systems-Change
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