Advance and Earn RFP Offers Robust Educational and Workforce Opportunities to NYC Youth Who are Not Working or in School
The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), in partnership with the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) and the Young Men’s Initiative (YMI,) released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for its new Advance & Earn program. This new initiative will offer education and workforce services to opportunity youth — young adults ages 16–24 in who are not working and not in school — in New York City.
Advance & Earn will offer robust services and seamless transitions from education to advanced training and job placement. The program, which is informed by extensive research and stakeholder feedback, offers participants personalized career pathways to better meet their needs and to align with the City’s vision for upward mobility outlined in Career Pathways: One City Working Together.
While the percentage of opportunity youth in New York City has steadily declined, falling from 18 percent in 2010 to 13 percent in 2017, the types of barriers faced by these 122,938 young people can make it challenging to provide adequate workforce and educational services[1]. Today’s opportunity youth are more likely to need comprehensive supports to overcome barriers such as low skill levels, mental health challenges, housing instability, lack of childcare, and histories of trauma and poverty.[2]
Advance & Earn takes these changes into account by providing multiple entry points to services for youth with a range of educational and workforce needs, from pre-high school equivalency (HSE) instruction to high school equivalency preparation and advanced training alongside work experience opportunities for participants. Key features include: literacy and math instruction, HSE test preparation, basic and advanced industry credential training, work readiness services, college and career exploration, paid work experience, support services, and transitional guidance as participants pursue the next steps of their pathway.
NYC Opportunity’s investment in Advance & Earn highlights one of its core functions — to design and test innovative program models, informed by data and research. The goal of this aspect of our work is to build evidence that supports scaling effective programs and policies across the city while discontinuing programs that do not yield intended results to try something new. NYC Opportunity manages an innovation fund to flexibly develop new strategies and programs in partnership with City agencies, and partners with independent evaluation firms to rigorously assess the effectiveness of these innovations.
The Advance & Earn model was developed based on research and evidence, informed by a range of stakeholders, and designed with youth and service providers in mind. A growing body of evidence — including from NYC Opportunity evaluations of Intern & Earn (formerly called the Young Adult Internship Program) and the Young Adult Literacy programs — suggests that robust programming and integrated educational and workforce development services may be effective ways to improve outcomes for opportunity youth. The design of Advance & Earn builds off of this research and also incorporates significant stakeholder feedback. DYCD and NYC Opportunity engaged with service providers, youth, researchers, and other stakeholders to complement this existing evidence, assess the challenges facing today’s opportunity youth, identify best practices, and ultimately inform the development of a new model that aims to create a seamless pathway for participants.
NYC Opportunity encourages service providers interested in this RFP to access it here. The RFP will be open until June 26, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.
[1] 2010 and 2016 American Community Survey Public Use Micro Sample analysis by NYC Opportunity.
[2] Lazar Treschan and Irene Lew, “Barriers to Entry: Fewer Out-of-School, Out-of-Work Young Adults, as Warning Signs Emerge,” Community Service Society and JobsFirstNYC, March 2018.
