The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions promotes collaborative, community-based efforts that build the power and influence of those with the least access to opportunity.
We support communities to come together to expand mobility, eliminate systemic barriers, and create their own solutions to their most pressing challenges. Throughout our history, we’ve done this work by focusing on supporting collaboration in communities, and on building community power and influence. In particular, we’ve supported communities to use these tools to support opportunity youth – young people who are disconnected from work and education.
Collaboration
Collaboration is at the core of all of our work. Among other projects, we co-convene, with FSG, the Collective Impact Forum, a network of individuals coming together to share experience and knowledge to accelerate the effectiveness and adoption of collective impact, a strategy designed to solve complex issues through deep cross system/cross sector community collaborations. Read more about this and other work focused on collaboration here.
We support communities to come together to expand mobility, eliminate systemic barriers, and create their own solutions to their most pressing challenges. Throughout our history, we’ve done this work by focusing on supporting collaboration in communities, and on building community power and influence.
Community Power Building
Our focus on building community power realizes our vision of promoting collaborative, community-based efforts that build the power and influence of those with the least access to opportunity. The work we do in this area relates to two main organizational objectives: supporting place-based and community-centered solutions to local issues; and emphasizing equity-based approaches in our work and in our partnerships with others. Our partnerships in this area include those with the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative and the Neighborhood Funders Group. Read more about our work on community power building here.
Opportunity Youth
The Forum for Community Solutions plays a role throughout the opportunity youth movement, with a primary focus on supporting the Opportunity Youth Forum. The Opportunity Youth Forum was launched in 2012 to leverage the new visibility and momentum of the opportunity youth movement coming out of the White House Council on Community Solutions, which called for innovative, place-based, collaborative solutions to reconnect the 6 million opportunity youth in the United States at that time.
The Opportunity Youth Forum is a network of dozens of urban, rural, and tribal communities seeking to scale reconnection pathways that achieve better outcomes in education and employment for opportunity youth. The Forum for Community Solutions, with its partners, supports these communities through regranted financial support, twice a year convenings, technical assistance, research and other learning opportunities. Read more about our work on opportunity youth here.