Applying the New Apps

How might this help youth?

It’s a question I pose to myself whenever I read about all the new apps and technologies popping up around the world.  I wonder how we might use these new innovations to strengthen eduployment pathways for vulnerable youth trying to get the education, skills, and jobs they need to Connect by 25. 

Here are a few that have been crossing my mind recently: 

Crowdsourcing Encouragement: The April issue of Fast Company had a funny and slightly disturbing piece about Budist.ru, a Russian website in which absolute strangers can sign up to give you a wake-up call. Turns out that lots of these generous strangers really just want to chat you up. 

However, what if we could sign up to give struggling youth – a young person in a YouthBuild program or a homeless student that is determined to get their diploma from Boston Day and Evening Academy – a wake-up call with a few words of encouragement? What if there was a website where I could sign up to offer congratulations to a student who passed Algebra II or completed an internship? Of course, these students actually need committed ongoing support from someone in their life…but not everyone is so lucky. What if we are passing up on an opportunity for them by not crowdsourcing this support?

Crowdsourcing Innovations:  Another way we could use crowdsourcing is to open up discussion for how we can strengthen re-engagement and address the youth unemployment crisis in our cities and towns.  Could the YTFG, or one of the many organizations focusing on opportunity policies, crowdsource ideas for new ways to use technology or how policies need to change? Could we get young people involved through a crowdsourcing mechanism? There is nothing preventing us from doing this; there are already a number of platforms we could build on. 

Crowdsourcing could be valuable to foundations as well.  How often do we see RFPs developed by foundations that seem to be missing some crucial opportunities?  The U.S. Department of Education has done a great job by putting up the draft RFPs and letting people comment digitally. What if foundations did this before they released an RFP as well?  We might see richer and more strategic RFPs that way because those on the ground with local and industry expertise would be able to inform the birds-eye view of philanthropy. 

Intentional Social Networking:  I was an early member of LinkedIn – I recognized its potential to help great people find influential jobs.  Although, without intentionality, it may succumb to the “birds of a feather” phenomenon of social networking. Instead, it can be used to intentionally cross over social networks and bridge the racial/ethnic/class divides that linger in the U.S.  

Why not create a capacity in LinkedIn -- it could be a group or a skill-- that says “I’m willing to connect with vulnerable youth as they make their way through careers.” Social networking is very organic, as we know, and it often reinforces yesteryear’s patterns of segregation and class (think of how Facebook often pushes the people that went to your high school or college at you). Intentional social networking is significant because it has a goal of using social networking to overcome patterns of structural inequity (I made up the term – don’t bother googling for it).  With intentional social networking, I could sign up with YouthBuild, ACE Leadership, or the Maya Angelou School in a way that lets graduates know that they can contact me for background on a field, feedback on their resume, or even an informal interview, if they are positioned for that next big career step.  What if they rated me afterward on how helpful I was as a way for me to demonstrate that I’m investing in the next generation?

I just heard about a community college in Utah that has set up student profiles anonymously with all their competencies transparently displayed. Employers can peruse the database looking for students with the right sets of competencies and approach the students. It’s a great technique for overcoming the racial bias that people of color face in submitting resumes and interviews. 

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These are just a few ideas. We would love to hear your ideas on how technology can help us build up the eduployment system and address the youth unemployment crisis.

photo from loc.gov