In this tumultuous time, the Reconnecting Youth Campaign must consider additional means of creating 1 million opportunities for reconnection to education and employment. Appropriations for existing federal programs will remain RYC’s primary focus, but changes to policies related to workforce development, higher education, labor, and tax policy may all prove fruitful ways to unlock more opportunities.

The Reconnecting Youth Campaign has advocated with and on behalf of Opportunity Youth (OY) since 2017. Across hundreds of meetings with policymakers, we’ve tried out and refined different ways of introducing the OY population, talking about the problem of youth disconnection, and explaining the benefit of programs that serve OY.  This post captures a few things that we have learned. 

President Trump’s budget contains a proposal to lump many workforce-development programs into a single line item, “Make America Skilled Again” (MASA).  MASA would likely end access to job training for Opportunity Youth (OY) in much of the country. This post explains how.