Youth-Led Systems Change in Memphis: Building a Connected Workforce Ecosystem
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According to the Aspen Institute for Community Solutions, Opportunity Youth (OY) are broadly defined as “young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market.”
With over five million disconnected OY nationwide, compounded by economic uncertainty, rising costs of living, and shifts in industry demands, the challenges faced by youth and young adults - those that will comprise our future workforce - are ever apparent.
Such challenges are particularly acute in Shelby County and the greater Memphis, TN metropolitan area. According to Memphis-based cradle-to-career nonprofit convener Seeding Success, the region is home to nearly 27,000 OY. The percentage of 16 to 24-year-olds in Memphis who fall into this category is nearly 20% - unchanged for more than three decades
Back in August, we published this blog post, centered on empowering youth and young adults in the workforce. This post will serve as its successor, unpacking our community- and youth-led systems change work in greater Memphis.
“Silos of Excellence”
Community-based organizations are often closest to our most vulnerable and marginalized populations.
In Memphis, a multitude of nonprofits are doing place-based, high-impact work in service to these communities, but they are often doing so disparately. These “silos of excellence” afford an opportunity to coalesce, coordinate, and build more fluid infrastructure around connecting more young people to more opportunities.
Indeed, according to a 2023 findings report produced by MemWorks - a collaboration between MDRC and Slingshot Memphis - “limited coordination between and within systems makes accessing workforce services unmanageable.”
Centered on understanding barriers to employment for Memphians in poverty, the MemWorks findings were reinforced by My Voice, Our Choice - a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Report, produced back in May by our partners at Code for America. The youth participatory researchers recommended a centralized technology platform be animated to better connect young Memphians to resources along pathways to employment.
In our continued pursuit of being community- and youth-led, the RiseKit team traveled to Memphis in November for further research and discovery. Our aims were twofold:
- Socialize, validate, and build on the recommendations made by the YPAR youth researchers;
- Conduct journey-mapping exercises with both OY, and the nonprofit staffers that work with them, to better understand points of disconnection along pathways to employment.
The Digital Hub
How can we help Memphis’ OY populations find and stay on fulfilling career pathways?
To tackle this question, we convened a group of over 30 nonprofit leaders, frontline workers, and community stakeholders. Hosted by our partners at the Assisi Foundation, organizations represented included many of the key players within the OY provider community, altogether serving thousands of youth and young adults across the region.
In line with the recommendations presented by the YPAR youth researchers, we sought out feedback from the youth service provider community on our central hypothesis - that implementing a unified “Digital Hub” platform could enable:
- Connectivity and coordination between OY, service providers, and employers;
- Better visibility into industry demands, and viable career pathways, for both OY and the frontline staff that are serving them;
- The data needed to better understand and mitigate points of disconnection.
We invited leaders in attendance to join us in a journey-mapping exercise, conducted in small groups, to better visualize points of fallout in connecting OY to fulfilling career pathways.
Over the following days, we conducted similar journey-mapping research exercises with OY program participants from three local nonprofit partners: Hospitality Hub, CodeCrew, and Christopher A. Pugh II Center.
Through feedback from leaders present at our convening, and in listening to the youth participants as they mapped their journeys, we emerged with reinforced convictions. Primarily, that a more connected workforce development ecosystem would create more opportunities for Memphis’ youth and young adults.
RiseKit - A System for Systems Change
Technology is not a silver bullet, but when deployed in a community-centric way, it can make a meaningful difference.
As we synthesize our learnings and await the data-driven findings from our time in Memphis, we are reminded that technology alone cannot alleviate the systemic pressures faced by youth and young adults.
Especially in Memphis, OY populations are faced with a multitude of barriers along pathways to opportunity. According to the MemWorks report, over 1 in 3 Memphians between the ages of 14–25 years are experiencing poverty. Housing instability, food insecurity, and lack of reliable transportation, feature among the prevailing, unmet material needs that young people lack on their journey to family-sustaining wages.
As we support the Memphis philanthropic community in making the righteous case for systems change, we also lean into what can be controlled, and what young Memphians are asking for. Namely, a better way to get connected - and stay connected - to the local workforce development ecosystem.
RiseKit’s platform connects Memphis’ job seekers (including OY), the community organizations that serve them, and employers, in one centralized Digital Hub. By building connective tissue within the workforce development ecosystem, the platform is designed to enable service coordination, community collaboration, and data analysis to inform broader systems change efforts.
Starting with our joint initiative to track and analyze 1,000 OY placements on fulfilling career pathways in 2025, alongside our partners at Code for America, Assisi Foundation, and dozens of nonprofit organizations across the region, we are committed to being the system for systems change within Memphis’ workforce development ecosystem.
“We're not short of programs for opportunity youth, but for some reason these programs are not at capacity. Clearly there’s a misunderstanding about who these young people are—what they need, how they want to be treated, and how they want to communicate.” - Janet Lo, Manager of Community partnerships for Shelby County Government
Interested in receiving the broader findings report from our OY research in Memphis, or exploring a similar community-led approach in your community?
Connect with us!
