Program purpose award to manage and operate the center for advancing policy on employment for youth, a youth policy development center (the center)

The purpose of the center is to increase the capacity of national, state, and local workforce systems to improve transition and employment-related outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities (Y YAD) ages 16-24, particularly those from historically underserved communities such as communities of color and lgbtq communities. The center will accomplish this by identifying and promoting the adoption of evidence-based policies and practices.-- activities to be performedservices GAP analysis develop a series of policy briefs and scans develop new research on underserved populations and broaden current research projects on pre-ETS, collaboration, PD create a resource guide on youth apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships facilitate the provision of individualized technical assistance to policymakers host a national working group, featuring a youth fellowship program promote strategic partnerships with key stakeholders build capacity in the higher education system for Y YAD readiness respond to rapid research requests increase the capacity of youth serving systems to provide quality PD-- deliverables expected outcomepublications (including websites) produced, reports regarding number of views downloads of publications, pageviews and engagement on the website and social media, conferences, events or webinars presented at, post event surveys, youth participants and skills gain, working group participation, and feedback obtained through various evaluation methods-- intended beneficiary(IES)youth and young adults with disabilities their families state-level policymakers in all three branches of government university and college career and disability centers workforce development and youth-serving professionals sponsors of youth apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs and other work-based learning opportunities vocational rehabilitation professionals and other researchers and policy practitioners.-- subrecipient activitiessan diego state university will lead the GAP analysis, cornell university will lead the PD work, and the national association of workforce development professionals will lead the apprenticeship work.