Friday, October 24, 2014
Rockefeller Foundation Addresses Youth Unemployment by Connecting Employers with Untapped Talent Pool
There are few things more depressing than being young, motivated, and unemployed. And while the problem of youth unemployment, occuring between ages 16 to 24, has gradually improved lately, things are still terrible and, if we unpack the numbers by race, it gets even worse. Caucasian youth have an unemployment rate of around 12 percent, while the share of young African Americans who can't find jobs is double that.
Foundations have taken any number of approaches to the problem over the years, spending boatloads of money with mixed results. These days, the hopes of some funders rest on multi-pronged efforts to train young people with concrete jobs skills, but also help them connect with successful adults, establish early ties to employers, and develop the social skills needed to succeed at work.
The Rockefeller Foundation is in pretty deep on the youth unemployment issue. Through its Employment Pathways Project, under which Grads of Life is funded, the foundation seeks to create a more inclusive economy, especially for young people from low-income communities who are often the biggest losers when economic downturns hit....