PROBLEM STATEMENT AND FOCUS AREAS
Why deepen our focus on young people who are disconnected from opportunities, family, and community? The United States has one of the most shocking wealth inequality conditions worldwide. The wealthiest 1 percent of families possess 40 percent of all wealth and the remaining 90 percent hold less than a quarter. [1] Not only is income inequality a crisis, but it is getting worse. Income inequality in America has increased about 20% from 1980 to 2016. [2] Much of this inequality can be traced to the effects of structural racism and intergenerational poverty that continue to plague our communities. While efforts to shift this imbalance are often aimed at older adults or young children suffering in poverty, young people – those in their crucial adolescent developmental stage – are most often left neglected. Among the 48 million young people in the United States, 10 million live in low-income families and 7 million in high-poverty communities. There are 4.6 million youth who are young parents, 3.4 million involved in the justice system, and 730,000 involved in the child welfare system. These statistics tell us that young people in the United States are suffering, systemically. Without adequate systems for support and success, young people experiencing the burdens of poverty risk becoming disconnected from their families and communities, stifling their ability to realize their full potential. Persisting racialized structural barriers mean that youth are being incarcerated rather than attending schools and jobs, being left homeless without safeguards in the foster care system, and fearing for their safety in their neighborhoods rather than experiencing nurturing, supportive connections. There is a dire need for policies that guide youth in their path to success and help them reach their potential as thriving adults. In order to support our country’s young people, policies must replace obstacles with opportunities. Adolescents aged 14-24 are in a critical period of development. With a strong foundation of family connections, relationships, communities and educational and employment opportunities, these young people can be positioned to assume productive, meaningful, and thoughtful roles in their communities and our country. AECF – Atlanta Civic Site aims to reconnect young people who have been oppressed by these systems of inequality and ensure that others do not find themselves disconnected. We aim to support youth leadership and development, build up culturally rooted community-based programs targeted toward young people, and empower these individuals with a culture of belonging. The Atlanta Civic Site identified three focus areas : (i) strong connections with school and opportunities for work, (ii) supportive communities and caring adults to support youth’s success, and (iii) spaces where youth feel safe, valued, and that they belong. FOCUS AREA ONE: Remaining Connected to School and Work Among the 48 million young people ages 14–24 in the United States, 4.7 million are not in school or working. There is a crisis of young people being disconnected from opportunity. For example, a key obstacle for youth’s education and employment is the school to prison pipeline. Here, harmful racialized discipline policies, like school expulsions and suspensions entail that youth of color are suspended and expelled from school at alarming rates. Such disciplinary tactics directly disconnect youth from opportunity, rather than focusing on necessary restoration and support mechanisms for them to learn and thrive. In addition to restorative measures, research shows that combining work-based learning alongside paid work experience and postsecondary education are critical to enabling youth engagement with school and work. This requires employers, high schools and postsecondary institutions to cooperate around a shared goal – keeping young people connected to their education trajectories and eventual careers. In order to keep youth connected to school and work, we need reformed state education funding so that schools in low income districts can provide holistic supports and family engagement to young people. Unequal education funding is directly impacted by extreme racial residential segregation in the United States. Though there are numerically more poor Whites than poor Blacks in the United States, poor Whites most often reside in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods where they can benefit from shared communal resources. This is not the case for poor people of color. In communities of color, we often see poverty concentrated residentially, meaning that there is little to no community wealth to support those struggling the most. One of the many outcomes of racially and residentially
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