A Playbook for Those Working with Emerging Youth
CHECK OUT OUR OPPORTUNITY PLAYBOOK
Young Adults Are Memphis's Greatest Underused Resource.
There are more than 93,000 young adults living in Shelby County. Unfortunately, nearly 20% of those people — approximately 27,000 of our sons, daughters, friends, parents, and neighbors — are disconnected from educational and employment opportunities (My Voice, Our Choice: The Shelby County YPAR Preliminary Report).
That percentage has held steady for more than three decades.
If you are reading this, then you want to be part of the solution.
This Playbook will help you, your organization or business, and countless others across the country improve programs and services for Opportunity Youth (youth and young adults from 16 to 24 who are out of work and looking to improve their lives).
Created with input from young adults across Shelby County, this Playbook provides practical information to help you learn more about local Opportunity Youth and offers valuable suggestions for developing and improving programs for them.
To better understand who this Playbook serves, let’s define Opportunity Youth.
About This Playbook
This Playbook is designed to help organizations and businesses in Shelby County improve their programs and services for young adults, especially those young adults who are out of work and seeking to improve their lives.
We provide small businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies in the Memphis and Shelby County area with strategies, resources, and tools to help them engage with Opportunity Youth and Emerging Youth.Opportunity Youth, or OY, are young people—typically ages 16 to 24—who face barriers to educational and employment opportunities.
What is a Playbook?
A playbook is a straightforward guide that helps businesses or organizations tackle a specific challenge or opportunity. This one focuses on how to better connect with and support youth and young adults. It shares helpful information about what makes this work challenging and then offers clear, easy-to-follow steps (plays) you can use to improve your approach.
Think of it like a sports playbook—our goal is to help everyone understand the game plan and work together toward success.
The Story Of This Playbook
Over six months, from the fall of 2023 to the spring of 2024, 10 young adults from across Memphis researched the experiences of area Opportunity Youth and made recommendations to support them. Each of the community researchers had experienced or was experiencing many of the challenges associated with being Opportunity Youth.
This project was sponsored by the Shelby County Youth and Education Subcommittee and facilitated by a team from Code for America, a national nonprofit working to improve the delivery of government services. Three local community organizations guided the day-to-day work of the researchers: Beyond Educating, Respect the Haven, and The Collective Blueprint.
The team released a community report and recommended three OY-focused programs for Shelby County to pilot. The Collective Blueprint then worked with young adults to implement one of those pilot recommendations: this very Playbook.
This Playbook will help you:
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Understand how to improve your organization or business’s connection with and support for Opportunity Youth.
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Discover best practices, including why they matter and how to implement them.
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Continue improving what's already working.
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Find new ideas to experiment with.
Throughout the Playbook, you’ll find links to worksheets and tutorials we’ve created as well as links to related content from across the web.
Each Playbook topic provides specific plays organizations can run to improve their offerings, along with links to additional resources. The Playbook can be read in order, or you can jump directly into the section that seems the most helpful.
At the beginning of each section, we highlight the types of roles we think will benefit the most from that content. We’ve focused on four types of roles:
Organizational Leaders:
People who are setting their organization’s strategies and are responsible for developing new programs and services.
Direct-support Staff:
Individuals who work directly with youth and young adults. These are the people delivering the program and services.
Marketing and Communication Staff:
People who develop messaging, handle outreach to communities, and maintain websites and social media accounts.
Young Adult Employers:
People who supervise young adults within their organizations.
Playbook
Table of Contents
Each module provides specific plays that organizations can run to help improve offerings, as well as links to more resources. The Playbook can be read in order, or you can jump directly into the section that seems the most relevant and helpful.
Here is everything you'll find in this Playbook:
PLAYS:
Local Opportunity Youth (OY) Goals and Motivators
PLAYS:
1. Take a Trauma-Informed Approach
2. Focus on Strengths and Weaknesses
3. See Young Adults as Individuals
4. Focus on Active Learning
5. Be Authentic and Transparent
6. Practice Culturally Appropriate Mentoring
7. Cultivate Support Networks
8. Set Clear Expectations and Next Steps
9. Plan for Emergencies
PLAYS:
1. Document Your Porgram Goals and Opportunities
2. RECORD It
PLAYS:
1. Share Opportunities Clearly
2. Build a Welcoming Onboarding Experience
PLAYS:
1. Set Up Check-ins for Internal Challenges
2. Make Sure Young Adults are Heard
PLAYS:
1. Get Your Team Ready to Use Data
2. Collect Data
3. Prioritize Findings
CONNECT WITH US
Our goal is to keep evolving the Playbook. To help with that, we want to hear from you. Are you or your organization already doing some of the things we’re recommending? Do you have ideas for improving this content? Did you try something from the Playbook and want to provide feedback?Use this form to reach out and let us know what you think.
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