The Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) has had a tremendous year of development, as evidenced through findings from Equal Measure’s Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund Annual Evaluation Report, the third and most recent independent evaluation of OYF.

The evaluation looked at progress and challenges across community collaboratives in the network.

Among the findings of the report:

1. Collaboratives have developed strong partnerships indicated by robust partner engagement and shared accountability toward a common goal. Specifically, 90 percent of collaboratives had participation of senior-level organizational and institutional partners with the power to change organizational polices or practices, or to align in-kind resources in support of the collaborative’s work.
2. The majority of collaboratives who have made progress made these two narrative changes: creating a frame that opportunity youth are assets and elevating the role of the systemic, versus individual, hardships these young people face.
3. Collaborative partners made a range of organizational policy and practice changes that demonstrate significant promise and progress in changing pathways to support opportunity youth.
4. Collaboratives are authentically engaging youth as partners in their work.
5. Although collaboratives have made headway leveraging public resources for this work, sustained funding for the collaborative infrastructure remains a challenge.

Read the evaluation in its entirety here.