PAYA Gives Nearly $3 Million to Expand Youth Apprenticeships

The Part­ner­ship to Advance Youth Appren­tice­ship (PAYA) has award­ed near­ly $3 mil­lion to sup­port 17 part­ners across the coun­try that will expand and sup­port high-qual­i­ty appren­tice­ship pro­grams for youth and young adults. PAYA is an ini­tia­tive led by New Amer­i­ca, a non­par­ti­san think tank, and is sup­port­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and numer­ous oth­er funders.

The grants seek to advance PAYA’s goal of estab­lish­ing 10,000 youth appren­tice­ships by 2025. Appren­tice­ships typ­i­cal­ly allow peo­ple to earn cre­den­tials and a pay­check while train­ing along­side skilled men­tors — and often help young peo­ple access post­sec­ondary pro­grams and gain good jobs.

The grantees include six new part­ners in dif­fer­ent states — Cal­i­for­nia, Indi­ana, Michi­gan, New Mex­i­co, New York and Ten­nessee — who will cre­ate mul­ti-year strate­gies for expand­ing and strength­en­ing youth appren­tice­ships local­ly. Nine exist­ing part­ner­ships across the coun­try also received fund­ing to accel­er­ate appren­tice­ship ini­tia­tives launched in 2019.

Career­Wise Col­orado and the Charleston Region­al Youth Appren­tice­ship Pro­gram at Tri­dent Tech­ni­cal Col­lege in South Car­oli­na also received sup­port to serve as PAYA Nation­al Learn­ing Hubs. The orga­ni­za­tions will sup­port the youth appren­tice­ship field by host­ing sum­mits and con­tribut­ing to research on youth appren­tice­ships. They will pro­vide tech­ni­cal assis­tance to oth­er PAYA part­ners, too.

Equi­table programs

The grantees will devel­op and expand their pro­grams using PAYA’s prin­ci­ples for youth appren­tice­ship. The prin­ci­ples empha­size qual­i­ty oppor­tu­ni­ties and list equi­table access to pro­gram­ming as a key pil­lar of appren­tice­ships — includ­ing tar­get­ed sup­ports for those adverse­ly impact­ed by long-stand­ing inequities in edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems and the labor market.

“To com­pete for qual­i­ty jobs in the recov­ery and build careers in the econ­o­my of the future, young adults will need post­sec­ondary options that com­bine work expe­ri­ence and struc­tured, low-cost path­ways to degrees,” says Anne-Marie Slaugh­ter, CEO of New Amer­i­ca. ​“Youth appren­tice­ship is unique­ly designed to meet these needs. As com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate the dis­rup­tions caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, these grants will pro­vide crit­i­cal sup­port to pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships work­ing to devel­op and rapid­ly expand appren­tice­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties for youth.”

Learn more about apprenticeships

• Equi­ty in Youth Appren­tice­ship Programs
• Resources to Expand Qual­i­ty Appren­tice­ship Programs
• Resources to Help Part­ner­ships Grow Youth Appren­tice­ship Programs