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Resource

Turning Points: How Young People in Four Career Pathways Programs Describe the Relationships that Shape Their Lives

March 01, 2017

Turning Points CoverAs a follow up study to Relationships Come First: How Four Career Development and Workforce Readiness Programs Prepare Young People for Work and Life, the Center for Promise presents Turning Points: How Young People in Four Career Pathways Programs Describe the Relationships that Shape Their Lives.

Turning Points builds on the programmatic insights from Relationships Come First by asking young people enrolled in career pathways programs in four cities – Café Momentum in Dallas; Per Scholas in the Bronx, Urban Alliance in Washington, DC, and Year Up in the Bay Area – to  describe how the relationships in their lives shape their development.

Through young people’s stories and pictures, the report offers a closer look at webs of support, systems of relationships that help young people achieve success, and cores, or clusters of relationships, such as those in a career pathways program.

Three findings emerged from this research:

Finding 1. Young people’s webs of support show four distinct cores of relationships: family, community, institution, and the career pathways program. Each provides important social support. The Career Pathways Core is unique among them because it offers four different types of support.

Finding 2. A young person’s web of support is a dynamic system. Young people access different cores at different times according to the individual’s changing needs and the degree to which a given core is responsive to those needs.

Finding 3. The Career Pathways Core appears to be responsive and integrated into the web of support, acting as a scaffold for young people’s positive development and for a wide range of supportive relationships that enables success in work and life.

This research study is part of the Youth Opportunity Fund initiative. The Youth Opportunity Fund, led by the Citi Foundation and America’s Promise Alliance, provides grants to nonprofits working in innovative ways to place low-income young adults on a path toward college and career success in 10 cities across the United States.

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About the Authors

Center for Promise Squared
Center for Promise

The Center for Promise, in collaboration with Boston University School of Education, is the first-ever research center for America’s Promise Alliance. The mission of the Center is to develop a deep knowledge and understanding about what is needed to help create the conditions so that all young people in America have the opportunity to succeed in school and life. The Center’s work will add to the academic exploration of these issues and help give communities and individuals the tools and knowledge to effectively work together to support young people.

Citi Foundation
Citi Foundation

The Citi Foundation works to promote economic progress in communities around the world and focuses on initiatives that expand financial inclusion. We collaborate with best-in-class partners to create measurable economic improvements that strengthen low-income families and communities. 

Family Engagement Youth Involvement College & Career Career Pathways College and Career Readiness
The 5 Promises

The 5 Promises represent conditions children need to achieve adult success. The collective work of the Alliance involves keeping these promises to America’s youth. This article relates to the promises highlighted below:

Caring Adults Caring Adults Safe Places Safe Places A Healthy Start A Healthy Start Effective Education Effective Education Opportunities to Help Others Opportunities to Help Others

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Creating Cultures of Care: Supporting the Whole Child through Trauma-Informed Practice
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