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25 Organizations Win Career-Connected Learning Awards

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There are great ideas in education, innovations that need attention and support.

The Catalyze Challenge is a promising and active joint venture with some pretty big names - non-profit American Student Assistance (ASA), Arnold Ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, Charter School Growth Fund, the Joyce Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. The venture – the Challenge – has parted with $10 million in funding so far to support education innovations, including their most recent round of more than $5 million to 25 organizations and initiatives nationwide.

This year’s awards were focused on “career identity and development, and post-high school pathways” and what’s known as “career-connected learning.” And for good reason.

"Gen Z wants to feel a sense of purpose in lives and careers. School needs to help them build the skillsets and mindsets to succeed and thrive and give them real-world experiences that will be a ladder to prosperity," said Romy Drucker, Education Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation. "This is a moment for creativity and imagination and we’re proud to be supporting educators and entrepreneurs with visionary ideas about how to make school more rigorous, career-connected and relevant."

The 25 Catalyze Challenges winners for 2022 are:

· AbreTech (Nationwide, Massachusetts) - developing emerging bilingual talent for in-demand careers in the tech industry.

· BAYADA Home Health Care (New Jersey, Hawaii, Pennsylvania) - connecting young people with careers in nursing and applied behavior analysis while meeting the nation’s urgent healthcare needs.

· The BroadStreet Institute/The Community Data Project (Multiple Locations) - supporting women of color advancing in data and leadership by addressing the gender disparities in a remote, hands-on internship work experience.

· Builders and Backers (Nationwide) - helping underrepresented entrepreneurs and learners gain the skills and real-world experience they need to pursue their ideas.

· Code the Spectrum (California) - building IT career-oriented technical training and professional development programs for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

· Cowden St. Collaborative (Segue Academy and Legacy High School for Education) (Rhode Island) - helping BIPOC students pursue professions in education by creating learning environments that center the importance of eradicating inequities.

· Ella Baker Institute/Young People's Leadership Cooperative (New York) - positioning young people to identify challenges in their communities and design, then implement enterprising solutions.

· Global Grid for Learning/Certified School Passport Administrator (Georgia, Nevada, D.C) - creating a unique Certified School Passport Administrator (CSPA) internship program that aligns with IT certificate pathways.

· Hopeworks Dual Enrollment/Hopeworks Camden (New Jersey, Pennsylvania) - working with employers to provide paid-training opportunities to learners in the IT field.

· Innovators for Purpose/New Futures Lab (Massachusetts) - reimagining the STEM learning experience by integrating art, design, STEM and youth-voice within a social justice framework.

· MindSpark Learning & STAR HARBOR Education Foundation/Gateway Global solution to scale GEOINT Tech to Colorado (Colorado) - working to bring geospatial intelligence apprenticeships to Colorado through high school STEM pathways.

· Moving Mountains/A Different World (D.C) - providing accessible, tech-enabled, and culturally relevant job shadowing for Black male college students.

· National Indian Education Association/Building Career Pathways for Native Students (Wisconsin) - increasing tribal workforce with earned construction degrees or certifications to address the housing and infrastructure needs for Native American nations.

· NuPaths/Central PA Cybersecurity Earn-and-Learn Ecosystem (Pennsylvania) - partnering with workforce development boards to create a cybersecurity careers ecosystem that addresses the lack of cybersecurity and IT career pathways.

· OneGoal in New York/Many Paths, One Goal (New York) - informing new advising tools and identifying non-degree pathways that will connect students to in-demand careers.

· OneInFive/Building Youth Supporters Through Training (Indiana) - providing students with lived mental health experiences rich, practice-based training that leads to peer specialist careers.

· Oregon STEM/Spark Oregon (Oregon) - using a pathfinding tool to develop a spectrum of culturally relevant career-connected learning resources.

· Radius Learning, Inc./VWBL (North Carolina) – charting workforce pathways to connect students with the jobs of tomorrow.

· Research Foundation of The City University of New York/Future Forward (New York) - bringing together colleges, schools, community organizations, and industry partners to create a new model that integrates wraparound support for under-served youth.

· Reve Academy/Rever in Residence Experience (Minnesota) - introducing high school students to entrepreneurship pathways with compensation and giving students mentorship opportunities.

· RevX (Nationwide) - bringing real-world learning to life by asking young people to investigate a community challenge, then address it using career skills.

· SkillUp Coalition/LevelUp Dallas (Texas) - supporting students pursue a career path based on their preferences via an online platform.

· Stepmojo Education/Hybrid Learning Model (Nationwide) - supporting students to take "steps" to increase their "mojo" (special talents) by radically expanding their access to high-quality, live online courses from best-in-class partners.

· unCommon Construction/3-Tiered Apprenticeship (Louisiana) - allowing students to apply to join a diverse team to earn hourly pay and school credit for building a house together.

· Urban Strategies, Inc./Niche Innovators and Social Enterprise (Nationwide) - helping low-income youth living in assisted housing gain paid work experience in the housing industry.

The winners were selected from more than 500 total applicants and for most of them, the funding and notoriety could be transformative.

“We're so excited to be selected as a winner of the Catalyze Challenge $500,000 award for innovations in career connected learning,” said Aaron Frumin, Founder, Uncommon Construction. “Through this grant, we’ll expand our apprenticeship program where youth can earn hourly pay and school credit for building a house together and the revenue from each project goes towards a scholarship for further education and career opportunities.”

The sentiments were echoed by another winner, the Ella Baker Institute, which will receive $400,000.

“We're elated that Catalyze Challenge will support our mission to provide true community-responsive learning experiences,” said Dr. Patrice E. Fenton, co-founder of the Institute. “We will use the grant to scale community organizing, leadership, and entrepreneurial skill development to help young people engage with curriculum, participate in action research, and solve community-level issues.”

Whatever challenges exist in education, the chances are excellent that the solutions already exist or are, at a minimum, already being pioneered somewhere. It’s necessary for those who can, to find, elevate, support and invest in those solutions. What we do not need is more new tools. What we desperately need is people who can take the best tools and build tool factories.

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