Guest presenters:

  • Nate Cadena, Chief Operating Officer, Denver Scholarship Foundation
  • Michaela Leslie-Rule, Senior Strategist, Wonder: Strategies for Good
  • Emily Lockwood, Senior Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Roz Pierson, Founder and Principal, Luminas LLC
  • Amy Simon, Founding Partner, Goodwin Simon Strategic Research

FCAN hostKimberly Lent, Assistant Director for Research and Policy

Understanding what success looks like to young people who are Black and Hispanic and those who are from households with lower incomes, what resources they need to access educational and employment opportunities, and the barriers that stand in their way is key. Education and youth advocates often undervalue the youth perspective as we seek ways to support young people in achieving their postsecondary and career aspirations. As we develop strategies and programs to best support young people, we should consider the important knowledge and expertise held by young people themselves—their voices must serve as a guide for our work.

In June 2020, Equitable Futures, a project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, released a report—Striving to Thriving—to answer these questions. In partnership with Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, the project engaged in a 16-month research project with over 4,000 youth nationwide to understand the impact of young people’s own mindsets on the formation of their occupational identity, work, and life goals. To inform the field and affect change, Wonder: Strategies for Good is now partnering with the Foundation to disseminate and translate the research findings, co-create and test a set of research informed tools and build the field’s capacity to activate this research within their specific area of work.

Join FCAN on Wednesday, September 30 as we host Equitable Futures and its partners — Goodwin Simon Strategic Research and Wonder: Strategies for Good — to learn more about how to use their breakthrough research findings to improve the experiences of Black and Hispanic students and lower income students in Florida.

In this session you will learn:

  • How the Equitable Futures project conducted a national mixed-methods study to capture the voices of over 4,000 young people, including young people in Florida.
  • How young people understand their racial, ethnic and gender identities and how they believe these aspects of themselves impact or influence their education and career.
  • How young people envision their future selves in the workforce, what they like to do, what they believe they are skilled at, and where they feel they belong.
  • How the emergent framework, Surviving, Striving, and Thriving, can help us understand the emotional and aspirational states young people pass through, and expect to pass through, as they pursue their career and life goals.
  • How communities can activate these research findings to align their work with experiences of young people.

Event Details

Webinar: Striving to Thriving: How Listening to the Experiences of Young People Can Help Black, Hispanic, and Lower-Income Students Succeed
Date and Time
: Wednesday, September 30, 2020, 3-4 p.m. EST

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