Watch Our Webinar: Preparing Young People for Workplace Success

Dur­ing a recent webi­nar dis­cus­sion, experts from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and Child Trends exam­ined new ways to help pre­pare young peo­ple for work­place success.

The ses­sion focused on Pos­i­tive Youth Devel­op­ment — an approach that helps orga­ni­za­tions cre­ate envi­ron­ments where young peo­ple can advance their skills while cul­ti­vat­ing con­nec­tions to school, fam­i­ly, work and community.

The pan­elists also tout­ed a new assess­ment instru­ment, the PILOT Tool. Devel­oped by Child Trends, a non­prof­it research cen­ter ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing out­comes for chil­dren, the Pilot Tool helps work­force devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions apply Pos­i­tive Youth Devel­op­ment strate­gies to set the stage for youth success.

Watch the webinar

The PILOT Tool emphasizes:

• Pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships: fos­ter­ing open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mutu­al respect and con­sis­tent support.
• Improved skills: pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal, emo­tion­al and social skills to advance edu­ca­tion and secure work.
• Link­ages: cre­at­ing crit­i­cal con­nec­tions across school, com­mu­ni­ty, work and family.
• Oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tribute and belong: using inclu­sive lan­guage and encour­ag­ing young peo­ple to shape programs.
• Trust­wor­thy and safe set­tings: guar­an­tee­ing sup­port­ive envi­ron­ments and mod­el­ing respect­ful interactions.

“This is not a tool for eval­u­a­tion but a tool for a con­ver­sa­tion,” says Kristin Ander­son Moore, a senior schol­ar at Child Trends. ​“That’s the goal — to start a con­ver­sa­tion with­in a part­ner­ship in order to increase the incor­po­ra­tion of pos­i­tive youth devel­op­ment ele­ments into the every­day prac­tices of orga­ni­za­tions and partnerships.”

The 60-minute webi­nar, avail­able via record­ing, was held on May 15, 2018. Both Pos­i­tive Youth Devel­op­ment and the Pilot Tool are sig­na­ture com­po­nents of Gen­er­a­tion Work, a mul­ti-site, mul­ti­year Casey Foun­da­tion ini­tia­tive designed to help young peo­ple gain the knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary to suc­ceed in today’s job market.