Our Partners
Aspen Forum for Community Solutions
The mission of the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions is to support community collaboration – including collective impact – that enables communities to effectively address their most pressing challenges. The Forum works to accomplish this mission by pursuing four complementary strategies including:
- building awareness by documenting and lifting up successful strategies and stories of success
- mobilizing stakeholders through knowledge and network development
- removing barriers by advocating for effective policy
- catalyzing investment by encouraging funder partnerships
The Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund is the first funding collaborative being developed and led by The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions.
The California Endowment
The California Endowment is a funder at many of our backbone organizations through Building Healthy Communities initiative.
Building Healthy Communities (BHC) is a 10 year, $1 billion comprehensive community initiative launched by The California Endowment in 2010 to advance statewide policy, change the narrative, and transform 14 of California’s communities devastated by health inequities into places where all people and neighborhoods thrive.
Our goal is healthy, fair, and just communities for all people who call California home. Our theory for how to get there is simple: We are strengthening the fabric of our democracy by investing in the social, economic, and political power of the very residents who have been the targets of exclusion, stigma, and discrimination. Transformative and sustained change also takes youth leadership, strong partnerships, and a compelling new story about how health happens—or should happen—in all communities. Youth and adult residents are harnessing this power and voice to change the rules at the local and state levels so that everyone is valued and has access to the resources and opportunities essential for health. Over time, these changes will lead to better health outcomes for all.
Funders
more to come...
policy and advocacy
more to come...
communities
Our 6 communities ad community organizations are central to the work we are able to do for Opportunity Youth. Our local collaboratives in each of the 6 communities are doing innovative work on the ground, and working to support local, state and national policy and legislation.
Business
Building career pathways for young people means partnering with businesses from providing job opportunities and training programs to insights at our collaborative tables. We partner across our communities with small local business to large corporations, and each one provides an opportunity for our young people to get on track to a career.
education
Re Engagement in education, diploma achievement and post secondary education for young people are core goals of the Opportunity Youth Initiative. Therefore, educational systems such as schools, community colleges, universities, graduation and training programs are a important part of our collaborations. Educational institutions are innovating around reengagement, career technical education and many other pathways to help young people achieve and thrive.
Government
Champions in our local government institutions and offices are important to help us create educational opportunities, remove barriers and create legislation and policies that better serve young people's reengagement into school and work onto a path towards a career. Our governmental partners are a large part of our work on changing systems so we can decrease the number of Opportunity Youth across the state of California.
youth
Not for us without us. Young people are the center of the Opportunity Youth work and are vital to not only informing the work, but energizing, co creating, advocating to uplift not only themselves, but others who share their stories and experiences.