The Youth CareerConnect program was designed to strengthen college- and career-readiness by redesigning the high school experience to focus on providing students with challenging, relevant learning opportunities, and enabling schools to develop new partnerships with colleges and employers to support instruction and to help develop the skills students need to be prepared for jobs now and in the future. It provided high school students with education and training that combined rigorous academic and technical curriculum focused on specific H-1B in-demand industries or careers that would increase participants’ employability in high-growth, in-demand occupations and industries and prepare them for post-secondary education.
The ultimate goals for the program were to ensure that participants gained academic and occupational skills by completing the program and graduating from high school; moved into a positive placement following high school that includes unsubsidized employment, post secondary education, long-term occupational skills training, or Registered Apprenticeship; obtained an industry-recognized credential in an H-1B industry or occupation for those industries where credential attainment is feasible by program completion in addition to a high school diploma; and earned post-secondary credit towards a degree or credit- bearing certificate issued by an institution of higher education.
Proposed program models were to:
Applicants could propose to use grant funds for a wide range of allowable activities within the overarching core elements that supported the direct education and training of eligible participants, including but not limited to, the following:
The Youth CareerConnect program has been discontinued. However, funding will be continued through similar programs. Such programs include:
(both programs can be viewed at the following link: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget15/crosscuttingissues/skillsforneweconomy.pdf.)
(which can be viewed at the following link: http://www.doleta.gov/grants/pdf/ETA_Funding_Opportunities_updated_6314.pdf. Additional information is also available at: http://www.doleta.gov/oa/aag.cfm)
More information regarding these replacement opportunities has yet to be published, and details may differ from what is listed above based on what is approved through the 2015 federal budget. This description is intended to be a place-holder until official guidance for these programs has been made available on grants.gov.
Eligible lead applicants, who were to serve as the fiscal agent, for grants under this program had to be a public or non-profit local workforce entity, a local education agency, or a non-profit entity. The grantee organization would be:
The Youth CareerConnect program will no longer be funded, this posting is for historical purposes only. See the Additional Information section of this posting for the opportunities projected to replace this program.
Approximately $100 million was expected to be available to fund approximately 25 to 40 grants, the DOL intended to fund grants ranging from $2 million to $7 million. Grants could be used to fund programs in a single site or to fund multi-site programs. Applicants were to request a funding amount within this range that is commensurate with the complexity and scope of their proposed program model (e.g., multi-industry and multi-site programs would be more likely to warrant higher funding). Applicants were required to provide a match of 25 percent of the grant award.