The Opportunity Youth Forum [OYF] Dr. Zirete Abdallah

Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) is a network comprised of over forty local collaborations in urban, rural, and tribal communities across the United States that seeks to build and scale reconnection pathways that achieve better outcomes in education, employment and overall well-being for opportunity youth. Opportunity youth are young adults, 16-24 years of age, who are engaged in neither work nor education. There are currently at least 5 million such young people in the US, and their lack of access to education and work comes at great personal cost to themselves, as well as long term social and economic costs to all of society. All told, nearly a million opportunity youth live in Opportunity Youth Forum communities. These communities reach from Seattle to Greenville, MS, and from New York City to the Hopi Tribe; and from Southern Maine to Hawai’i. From the movement and OYF launch, in 2012, the number of opportunity youth dropped by over 1 million nationally by 2019, thanks to the efforts of many organizations, leaders and young people, proving that change is possible through concerted, multi-level efforts. Read more about the impact of OYF. Over the next 10 years, OYF’s goal, a part the national OY movement goal, is to reduce the incidence of youth disconnection by 50% in OYF communities – or a reduction of 500,000 opportunity youth – and to make sure that opportunities for youth are more equitably available. To create this impact, OYF makes change happen at the national, state, and local levels: At the national level, OYF helped to found the Opportunity Youth Network, a collaboration of many national OY-focused intermediaries, that focuses on policy change. We also support Opportunity Youth United, a youth-led advocacy initiative and other national advocacy efforts. At the state level, OYF is helping to grow state policy change movements (such as in California and Texas). For local collaboratives, OYF provides a variety of funding opportunities, technical assistance programs, twice annual convenings and other