Save the Date -March 4-6, 2024

Description: This track will address challenges faced by youth in marginalized and disadvantaged communities. It will focus on six key barriers: obtaining vital documents, homelessness, transportation, childcare, geographic barriers, and mental health services. 

Call for Proposals:  

NYEC is looking for proposals relating to the following topic areas. Proposals should include best practices, research, and innovative strategies that address key challenges young people face in obtaining employment. 

• Vital Documents: IDs, Social Security card, birth certificate, immigration related documents and Opportunities 

• Geographic Barriers (rural and remote populations with limited resource availability) 
• Homelessness:  housing solutions, access to education and employment opportunities 
• Childcare/Parenting Youth: Addressing cost, accessibility, and quality of childcare 
• Transportation: Addressing challenges including lack of reliable public transit, gas money, and cost of obtaining a vehicle. Providing community-based initiatives and solutions. 
• Mental Health: Community solutions for access to mental health care, supportive data on mental health and employment, and innovative strategies to identify and address mental health needs 

Description: In this track, participants will learn about the benefits and challenges of cooperating across multiple systems and will identify ways to break down silos and improve communication.  Areas of focus include: 1) the role of elected leaders, 2) working with the criminal justice system 3) serving youth experiencing homelessness 4) collaborating with the most important stakeholder group - young people. 

Call for Proposals 

For this track, NYEC seeks innovative collaborations between workforce/youth employment organizations and entities outside of the workforce world. Have you built a system that is streamlined, easy-to-use, and effective from a young person’s point of view? Presenters should come ready to share the types of tools, cooperative agreements, funding arrangements, and other useful information so practitioners, community leaders, and young people can have a roadmap to replicate how you achieved the collaboration. Examples of collaborative partnerships NYEC would like to highlight: 

• Juvenile Justice departments and community-based organizations 
• Homelessness focused organizations and employers 
• Cultivating Employer Partnerships: nurturing partnerships with local businesses and em44ployers to increase job opportunities for youth   

Description: This track will highlight the components and practices of sustainable, high-quality, youth development programs. This includes practices at the organization-level, staff development and retention, and youth opportunities. Topics include best practices for professional development and staff wellness, grant writing and reporting, program monitoring and evaluation, and how to offer the most impactful youth opportunities (apprenticeships, internships, mentorship, etc.) and building program culture.

Call for Proposals: 

Proposals should provide practical skills for building and maintaining programs that are both successful and sustainable. Presenters should focus on the behind-the-scenes and organizational practices they implement to keep their programs running effectively. Example topics include: 

• Professional development 
• Preventing the critical issue of burnout and compassion fatigue 
• Grant writing, budgeting, and reporting 
• Building Effective Youth Employment Programs:  internships, apprenticeships, mentorship programs, and job placement initiatives 
• The Importance of Monitoring and Evaluation  

• Building a positive program culture 

Description: This track identifies the specific needs of sub populations, including justice-impacted youth, individuals following non-traditional pathways, people living with disabilities, LGBTQ+ youth, and survivors of trafficking.  Workshops will provide a space for exploring their unique challenges, discussing strategies for empowerment, and promoting inclusivity and equal opportunities.  

Call for Proposal 

Proposals for this track can include a diverse range of topics focusing on vulnerable populations and intentional solutions to meet their unique needs.  

Supporting Justice-Impacted Youth: Explore ways to support reintegration for young people impacted by the justice system. Discussions will revolve around providing educational opportunities, addressing barriers to employment, and promoting rehabilitation and empowerment. 

Embracing Non-Traditional Pathways:  Fostering a supportive environment that encourages diverse pathways to achievement including but not limited to providing support and resources to women in nontraditional job sectors, alternatives to higher education, and entrepreneurship.  

Promoting Racial Equity in the Workplace: Understand and address racial disparities in the workplace, provide best practices for inclusive hiring, provide resources on how to empower marginalized youth, or provide policy and advocacy strategies.  

Promoting Accessibility and Inclusivity for People with Disabilities: Explore best practices for accommodating disabilities in educational and professional settings, creating barrier-free environments, and promoting an understanding and accommodating culture. 

Supporting Survivors of Trafficking: In this track, we will acknowledge the resilience of survivors of trafficking and focus on how to provide them with resources and opportunities for empowerment. Discussions will address trauma-informed support, and creating safe spaces for survivors to rebuild their lives and pursue meaningful pathways to success 

Description: This track will focus on policies that can support Opportunity Youth as they adapt to our evolving labor market and how Federal investments are impacting these developments. Sessions will explore how policymakers are seeking to “reshore” supply chains, expand apprenticeships & work-based learning, work with (or against) AI and gig work, and increase economic mobility. The track will also explore how organizations and coalitions are impacting policy related to Opportunity Youth. 

Call for Proposal  

Proposals should address advocacy, policy change, or coalition building with a focus on Opportunity Youth. We are especially interested in proposals that focus on 1) using data to drive policy change at the local, state, or federal levels, 2) framing and narrative change as an advocacy strategy, 3) coalitions of unusual suspects that are achieving policy wins, 4) directing federal infrastructure funding to training for Opportunity Youth, and 5) policy responses to the changing nature of work (gig work, entrepreneurship, preparing young people for remote work, e.g.).  

This track will focus on best practices when working to effectively re-engage youth and young adults who have dropped out of high school or dropped out of college. We will hear from organizations involved in re-engagement (community-based re-engagement centers) regarding their practices in identifying and reaching out to young adults who have dropped out of high school, as well as re-engaging them in their education (re-enrolling them in district high schools, alternative schools, or GED/Hi-Set programs). Additionally, we will hear from programs addressing the college stop-out crisis, with a particular emphasis on the community college system.  

Call for Proposal  

Proposals should address outreach, re-engagement, incorporating youth leadership co-design and tracking your success, with a focus on Opportunity Youth. We are especially interested in proposals that focus on 1) methods of re-connecting youth and successful outreach measures, 2) data around causes of disconnection as well as supporting data on those who have been re-engaged 3) Best practices in tracking success and 4) Ways to co-design programs to incorporate more youth voices and thus, more youth leaders.

Description: Too often, data in the workforce-development field is not complete, not timely, or not relevant to improving programming and outcomes. In this track, we’ll explore concrete ways to use data to improve programs and drive policy change. We’ll cover creative ways to track outcomes in real time, how to use fiscal mapping to understand funding flows in your community, and ways to leverage existing datasets to generate new findings.  

Call for Proposal 

Proposals should describe efforts to improve the quality of data related to Opportunity Youth, and its application to service provision. We are interested in proposals related to: 1) approaches that enable providers to more accurately track outcomes and continuously improve operations, 2) efforts that transform data use to serve justice-impacted young people more effectively, 3) fiscal-mapping efforts that reveal new funding opportunities at the community level, and 4) mining, aggregating, or combining existing datasets (administrative data, state data systems, U.S. Census Bureau data, e.g.) to uncover new findings about Opportunity Youth.