Building Equitable Pathways

Our Goals

Driving Equity

Building Equitable Pathways strives to improve our education and workforce systems so that all young people can move seamlessly and successfully from high school to college, career, and beyond.

A deep commitment to equity stands at the heart of Building Equitable Pathways. This work aims to ensure that, at every stage and key transition point in their lives, Black and Latinx youth and young people who are experiencing poverty can access the knowledge, skills development opportunities, support, and relationships necessary to thrive in education and in the workforce.

Building better, more equitable college and career pathways systems, and supporting and uplifting the organizations that make them possible, is an important part of how we can make that happen.

Changing Systems

Building Equitable Pathways is a community of practice with 14 innovative intermediary organizations, JFF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Walton Family Foundation.

Intermediaries bring together key players and mobilize cross-sector partnerships to advance equitable pathways. They connect leaders in K-12 education, postsecondary education and training, industry, and government to forge partnerships, craft strategies, and secure funding to develop high-quality college and career pathways.

Together, we seek to increase our individual and collective capacity to change our education and workforce systems for the better. We will identify best practices, create tools, and develop a theory of action to support the efforts of high-quality intermediaries to transform our systems and scale and sustain equitable pathways. We aim to drive engagement across these systems, improve their sustainability, and ultimately, influence more equitable student outcomes in academics and careers.

Building Equitable Pathways focuses on the role intermediaries play in three key areas: facilitating racial equity in the design and scaling of college and career pathways, advocating for policy solutions, and building strong data and infrastructure practices.

Racial Equity

We aim to advance a vision for racial equity in pathways systems by implementing anti-racist practices and policies that affect the lived experiences of youth and the adults working to support them.

As the connector within a pathways ecosystem, intermediaries are uniquely positioned to facilitate the reimagining and creation of equitable pathways systems that truly support all young people in their efforts to succeed in college and careers.

Policy and Advocacy

We aim to cultivate and mobilize the policy expertise and advocacy capacity of intermediaries so they can more deeply influence their policy environments and create a groundswell of collective policy action nationally.

Intermediaries are uniquely positioned to influence policy because they have a commitment to equity and the ability to bring together—and learn from—a diverse set of partners.

Data and Infrastructure

We aim to build strong data and infrastructure practices to facilitate efforts to collect, monitor, analyze, and act on data to support equitable outcomes in pathways ecosystems.

By focusing on their data collection and infrastructure strategies, intermediaries can better shape, advocate for, and evaluate policy and equity solutions.

We also want to thank and recognize the contributions of the first Building Equitable Pathways cohort: Boys and Girls Club of Greater Memphis, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Career Connect Washington, CareerWise Colorado, HERE to HERE, Rush University Medical Center, YouthForce NOLA, Equal Measure, Mission Minded, and Square Button. Their partnership, expertise, and support were key to developing the tools and resources that follow.

Blog Series

Learnings and Insights About Racial Equity, Policy, and Data: The Building Equitable Pathways Blog Series shares provocations, insights, and lessons from the partners in the initiative.

We are excited to share the challenges we face, the questions we are grappling with, and the solutions we create through Building Equitable Pathways over the next two years. We hope you will learn with us as we seek to increase our individual and collective capacity to change our education and workforce systems for the better.

Podcast

In the Building Equitable Pathways Podcast by Jobs for the Future (JFF), host Kyle Hartung speaks with leaders from across the country working at the intersection of education, training and workforce development. Together, they discuss the work their organizations are doing to create equitable pathways systems so that more Black and Latinx youth and young people experiencing poverty succeed in college and their future careers.

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