Youth Workforce and Justice Updates from CLASP

Check out new resources from CLASP focused on workforce development as a community violence intervention, summer youth employment, and WIOA reauthorization.

Kathy Tran explores How Proposed WIOA Reauthorization Would Change Youth Programs. The authorization for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) expired in 2020 and she advocates that policymakers should use this reauthorization process to improve the legislation and make significant investments in federal spending on the workforce system—particularly in programs that support young people.


On January 4, 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a Training and Employment Notice providing local workforce boards, American Job Centers (AJCs), workforce development partners, and grantees with information on supporting community violence intervention (CVI) strategies that include an employment or workforce component. In Designing Equitable Community Violence Intervention Strategies with Employment and Workforce Supports, Melissa Young and Nia West-Bey offer recommendations for supporting the design and implementation of community violence interventions based on research and practice evidence.
Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) offer paid opportunities for youth and young adults to gain career exposure, training, and work experience. In the spring of 2022, CLASP set out to understand how SYEPs have changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the resources needed to expand access to quality summer job experiences. The resulting pair of documents shares insights gleaned from interviews with a small sampling of SYEP funders, providers, and youth:
SYEP in 2021: Lessons for a Changing World looks back at how SYEPs and youth responded to the realities of a second pandemic summer, with implications for 2022 and beyond.
Toward a Vision of Quality Summer Employment for All Youth considers what SYEPs could be. What if every young person who wanted a summer job could gain access to an experience that met their needs in the ways they deserve? What might it take to make that possible?

Updating WIOA to Empower Workers and Create Shared Prosperity: Sapna Mehta and Emily Andrews discuss how the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) perpetuates existing systemic barriers to quality employment for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous workers–and how WIOA reauthorization is a great opportunity for advancing equity and centering workers. WIOA reauthorization also presents an opportunity to update workforce interventions to better ensure individuals facing multiple intersecting structural barriers to quality employment opportunities can access economic opportunity and security.


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