What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• The PAYA National Partners came together to create a set of principles to guide effective youth apprenticeship to benefit young people and employers alike.
• How can funders help to create and alter programs to fit these principles? Where is the most work needed?
• Learn about the role of apprenticeships in solving employment problems.
The vision of the Partnership is that youth apprenticeship will transform how the nation’s education system prepares young people for careers and launches them into a successful adulthood. We believe apprenticeship can promote a more inclusive economy while also meeting the needs of business.
To make this vision a reality, the PAYA National Partners developed a set of guiding principles for high-quality youth apprenticeship to provide clear and common direction to the field. Grounded in research and experience, these principles are structured to be both practical and aspirational. They provide clear guidance to industry, education, and community leaders, and state and local policymakers, while at the same time setting a high-bar for program design, outcomes, and continuous improvement.
Principles:
- Career-oriented: Learning is structured around knowledge, skills, and competencies that lead to careers with family-supporting wages.
- Equitable: Learning is accessible to every student, with targeted supports for those adversely impacted by long-standing inequities in our education system and labor market.
- Portable: Learning leads to postsecondary credentials and transferable college credit that expand options for students.
- Adaptable: Learning is designed collaboratively to be recognized and valued across an industry or sector.
- Accountable: Student, employer, and program outcomes are monitored using transparent metrics to support improvement.
Youth apprenticeship allows students to complete high school, start their postsecondary education at no cost, get paid work experience alongside a mentor, and start along a path that broadens their options for the future. Youth apprenticeship is a cost-effective talent strategy for employers, as apprentices build skills to meet evolving business needs and develop into valued contributors to their employers’ bottom line.