In a time of very difficult transition and challenges for our country, we cannot afford as a society or\ economy or an economy to leave any of our young people behind. As many as 5 million young 24 in theween 16 and United States are currently not enrolled in an Educational Program or in the workforce. I believe we have a responsibility to do everything we can to reach these youth and provide them with avenues of opportunity and on ramps to fulfilling careers. In a lot of cases, there are many barriers to making that happen for these young people, anduding economic mobility providing them with the opportunity for their futures. Some of the barriers include homelessness, poor health outcomes, violence, and of course the criminal Justice System. Inorgan, we are tackling oregon, we are tackling these barriers one by one. I signed a bill this week that changes the way we try and sentence youth, shifting the focus to prevention and rehabilitation. As we all know, youth who spent time in adult prisons are much more likely to reoffend. Disparities inic our Justice System. Young peoples brains hold capacity for change and influence. Over the years, we saw how this played out in oregon, hundreds of cases. What was key for us is the data. The data really informed our path moving forward. Changing sentencing guidelines bychanging sentencing guidelines for youth offenders, we know communities can be made safer and young people will have the opportunities to make a turnaround in their lives. Our guests today will help us explore a number of the solution and learn more about these 5 million young people, and hopefully provide us with strategies we can replicate in our state. Im going to turn it over to governor hutchinson. Gov. Hutchinson thank you, Governor Brown. Thank you for your leadership in oregon on. Oregon. In arkansas, we have a low unemployment rate, 3. 5 . That means that we dont want anyone disconnected. We want to move them into the workforce, give them opportunity. Theres probably more opportunity today than at any time in terms of employment if we make sure everyone has a connection. I will be introducing our panelists soon. Grateful for their leadership. When i became governor, one of the areas of disconnected youth was our foster care children. In arkansas, we had so many children in foster care and yet we did not have foster homes for them. We convened the faithbased community, the nonprofit community, and created an initiative called restore hope. We have been able to increase foster care parent participation by 15 . More parents saying we will join and help with our foster children. Children in foster care have been reduced as well because of some initiatives. Money 24 million extra into our foster care system for more caseworkers. We reduced the ratio of toeworkers from 281 down 18. 7 children per caseworker. These were areas we had to make progress in. ,e looked at our Youth Services we closed two institutions and moved some of those services to the community so they can have or access to health care and drug treatment counseling as well. One of the things i believe is important is you want disconnected youth to have a chance at a ged. Theres an even greater opportunity to get a High School Diploma. We passed a law that allowed an adult to get a High School Diploma. Someone who might be a single mom with children can go back and get their High School Diploma. I applaud Goodwill Industries which has partnered with us to accomplish that. People can get their High School Diploma regardless of their circumstances in life. Today, we have the pleasure of being joined by the executive. Irector of Youth Move National , deputy director. F the aspen forum. Nd, John Valverde an advocate for youth who is now working in the field of Youth Engagement to encourage the inclusion of youth voice and policy change, advocating for changes in the Health System to include care options for treatment. Les manages the work of the Opportunity Youth forum at is aspen institute, which seeking to scale multiple reconnection pathways that achieve Better Outcomes and employment for youth who are disconnected from education and work. Mr. John valverde is the chief executive officer of youth build which allows young people who left School Without a diploma pathways to jobs, entrepreneurship, other opportunities. Ms. Bergan, i will turn things over to you first to provide the challenges this population faces. For leadingnk you this conversation and this population of young people who are disconnected. There is an opportunity for us to offer to these youth and young adults. Nearly one in eight youth in america between the ages of 16 and 24 are classified in this population of disconnected youth. This means they are not connected formally to an education opportunity or employment opportunity, and that they require some skill building in order to lead a successful adulthood. There are many advantages to focusing on this population. This is a health care concern, employment issue, Economic Development issue. You spent the morning talking about topics that touch specifically this population, and thank you for this time today. I represent youthmove, a National Youth driven Membership Organization dedicated to building leadership and advocacy skills for young people navigating Mental Health, substance misuse, juvenile justice. We believe, by emboldening these young people to share their lived experience, their stories of how services we offered them either helped or didnt help them become successful, and sharing those with policymakers like you, we can create successful change. Our members are passionate about creating a Better Future for the next generation of young people. They want to do that by being involved in decisions that shape the policies and decisions in front of. We are work in front of us. We are working in an area where the country is interested in the concept of patient centered health care delivery, Quality Improvement measures that allow us to be more effective with no additional resources. Our lens that youth move is, lets do that but through youth voice. Lets put young people in the driver seat of their own care and our systems structure. I was a young person who struggled with anxiety and depression in my high school years, and what i stepped out into the adult world, i left my natural supports behind. I felt i found myself facing i found myself pregnant at 19 and now i had to care for myself , but my young daughter that was joining me. I was blessed to have people wrapped around me to help me get back on my feet. I met an Educational Institution willing to work with me and my alternative education course, and i was provided prenatal and postnatal care designed for teen parents to help empower me become a successful parent. My story is not common as a young person story. There are those who cant access those services over what was successful and effective but hearing from another young person so these can create moving forward. Briefly, young people are so involved in creating opportunity for this population. We have young people creating positive prosocial based programs in communities that they have connection rather than isolation. To experience acceptance instead of stigmatization. We have Young People Working as youth advisors and youth x words to state agencies, helping community,ars to the serving as advisors to governors councils and state Agency Councils across the country. Young people are very interested in addressing the silos that exist between the system. A specific example, most of us live in a state where the mental Health System is responsible to care up to age 18 or 21 years of age. And then on their birthday, no less, a young person is no longer eligible to have them be successful. Theres a cliff between those services in the childrens system and what is needed to access the adult system. These are actively asking policymakers to think about how do we intermix and create a bridge between those children and Adult Services . And matchg person mix to stay with a caring case manager for just a little bit for to set up for sex for successful adulthood. One last thing, they are not only joining, but creating a peer workforce. The concept of young people helping their peers is not new, but is now being invested in Restorative Justice practices within the mental Health System. The concept of a peer workforce is there a young person who is recently successfully navigated the social system can turn around and assist another young person and never getting that system. They serve as an advocate, a confident, mentor, and role model that there is hope for a successful future. We have a generation of young people committed to creating a stronger future, and i think the strongest thing we can do is offer them a seat at the table as we design that successful future. Thats a feature where young people will not be experiencing disconnection. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you sharing your story. We appreciate your extraordinary leadership. Miss miles, over to you. Its a real honor to be here. I want to thank governors brown and hutchison for this opportunity. I want to tell you about our work and i want to talk about strategies working across the country to improve education outcomes. Before doing so, there are two key points ms. Bergen noted i want to underline. The first is how we frame this challenge of disconnected youth matters. Our work was born out of the white House Counsel solutions. They renamed it Youth Opportunities because Research Found its systems disconnected, not the young people. And when you talk to young people about the vision they hold for themselves, their optimism is palpable. That access frame matters, not only in our language, but programming and policy. The second piece is the Civic Engagement that young people hold in terms of the ways that which they reconnect to education and careers, and also impact their families and communities. Thats key also to have we can think about the programs and policies that improve programs for young people. Really quickly, to give you a sense of the work weve been doing the past several years, weve invested in 28 communities across the country. That includes rural, urban, and tribal communities, because we want to make sure baume talk about advancing our most marginalized young people, we are documenting our Rural Communities and tribal communities getting to Better Outcomes. We support collaboratives in these 28 places. That means these collaboratives are bringing the k12 system, postsecondary system, foster care system, in addition to local philanthropy, elected leadership, so that together with young people at the center, they are able to work on not only problem identification, but solution design. When we heard the types of outcomes Governor Brown and hutchison talked about, they are able to use cross sector collaboratives to get to Better Outcomes. To date, we have been able to track not only accelerated system change, now k12 partnering with postsecondaries, partnering with employers, but also seeing tremendous metric impact, young people attaining secondary credentials. Civicritically, the engagement and civic livelihood of our communities continuing to increase and benefit from these young people. So, with that in mind, the two last things id like to say, we believe when we talk about the barriers young people face, when we look at how systems are disconnected, we believe thats the result of policies that created the barriers every young people face today. When we talk about what works and what is most effective to improve outcomes, it is critical we hold that perspective in our minds and since sure strategies since sure strategies that put equality at the center. The other piece we talk about is why its critical to have the people most impacted as a center problem identification and solution design. Young people are the experts in what works for them and they are experts in designing solutions that can achieve impact. There are three points i want to make first is to continue to prove improve outcomes. The first, we must make the business case. We must partner with employers to continue to improve not just education, but career outcomes. The second, there are so many policy barriers and opportunities states can move to generate Better Outcomes. The third piece is thinking about the different ways that we framed the challenge. I want to offer a couple of ways for states to consider framing not just the challenge, but the opportunity that exists to improve outcomes. Starting with the business case. Data, thatanks to nearly 6 million entrylevel jobs will be generated by 2020. We also know, when we look at the issue of retainment in these jobs, particularly retentive meant strategies, we know annually, for example, in the retail sector, there is an annual cost of 10 million to address the retention challenges for the retail sector. When we talk about what states can do, there is an opportunity for governments to partner with employers, working in real time on hiring strategies to be able to bring some of those solution sets to the national, state level for employers to be able to partner with the local workforce board, for example, or even local employers to bring some of the practices that weve been able to document that are getting to training, upscaling, and retention forever countries young people. Its not only the certifications young people need, that we have seen employers committed to hiring opportunities, look at ways they can provide transportation, health care, some of the wraparound supports we know our young people need to be successful in the workplace. Thats just one example. The other thing is that we know there is bipartisan support for these issues. This is an issue of political resilience because local employers want to work with governors to expand Training Programs that can meet workforce needs. The last thing i want to say is we know that there are lots of different policies states can leverage. That brings me to my point that we might be able to move together. The workforce opportunity act was reauthorized and this was set specifically for our countries young adults to Access Training and education necessary in the workforce. However, when we look at who is able to access these resources, we know while its intended is the marginalized population, only about 3. 7 are able to use these dollars. This is a real opportunity for states to what and how they disaggregate who their population is. Theyxample, in california, were able to identify only 5 of english language learners was able to access these employment dollars, even though one third of their workforce was foreignborn people. This is an opportunity for states to look at the data to figure out who is our workforce and how to be tap into these state dollars to bring the training and employment skills that are necessary for our young people . The other piece of legislation is that over the past few years, weve been able to allocate 195 million additional in revenue for us to use, but only 8 of these dollars are reaching young people where they live. So part of our work is to make sure were partnering with states making investments to support Youth Programs to help give Education Skills training thats really important. Last thing on policy, we know that education matters. Young people need to, as governor hutcherson reminded us, they need secondary education. But we also know to prepare for the future jobs, to prepare for automation of jobs, young people need postsecondary education. There are opportunities to expand funding streams, that not only provide access to college, but with the expansion of it, we can specifically use this legislation at the state level barriers because this legislation brings transportation, health care, and childcare, some of the barriers young people face. Want to lift up his alternative ways to challenges young people experience. So for those of you who may not know, there is a professor at the university of california, john powell, who leads work and research noted at targeted universalism. His Research Tells Us in order to get to outcomes that really improve benefits for our countrys most marginalized people, we must set universal goals, whether thats third grade education reading levels, or health care for all. We have to set universal goals and how we want to address our countrys challenges, but we must target our strategies so that they really do meet our most vulnerable populations where they are. So when we think about what that means for opportunities, we need to look at justice, foster care. To targetwe need strategies to meet the unique needs of those populations while looking at how young people can continue to be supportive. Earlierr piece i noted is Holding Equity at the center, being able to look at racial identities, looking at gender identity that we serve, so that we can target our strategy and approach. Offer isframe ill continue to support cross system and cross sector collaboration. Heres the thing. Complex. Engesr are Solutions Must not only