Durham Connected by 25

Durham Connected by 25 connects youth in Durham

One in ten American youth ages 16 to 24 are disconnected from the conventional paths of education, work, and civic engagement that lead to productive adulthood. These youth are not in school or don't have a high school degree, not working or in the legitimate labor market, involved with the criminal justice system or facing significant domestic issues.

In order to understand how this national problem affects the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, the GSK Foundation asked MDC to study disconnected youth in the Raleigh-Durham region.  In August 2008, MDC released Disconnected Youth in the Triangle: An Ominous Problem Hidden in Plain Sight, a report that found that 6.6 percent of youth in the Triangle region are disconnected. The problem was most acute in Durham, where more than 30 percent of Durham youth between 16 and 24 are disconnected or at significant risk of becoming so. Unlike other cities in the Triangle, in Durham there is a larger number of disconnected youth older than age 2--which suggests that the systems to reconnect older youth are outmatched by the magnitude of the challenge. The four-year graduation rate from Durham Public Schools is only 63%, and more than a third of the city?s youth either lack a high school credential or have a high school diploma as their terminal degree. Considering the fact that the Durham region leads the South in high-paying professional, scientific, and technical jobs, there is a tragic mismatch between the jobs in the area and the preparation that its citizens are receiving.  These jobs are not available to our youth. This disconnect leads to high unemployment rates, especially among African-American males, whose unemployment rates are much higher that the youth population as a whole. These troubling factors are accompanied by other social issues faced by Durham youth--like high assault rates, pregnancy rates, and mortality rates.

To help Durham connect more of its youth to work and education, MDC organized a group of concerned citizens--including the superintendent of Durham Public Schools, the city manager, the director of Durham's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the president of Durham Technical Community College, members of the Board of County Commissioners, the City Council and Durham's philanthropic community--to take a learning trip to Portland, Oregon, a city nationally recognized for prevention and re-engagement of disconnected youth. Upon returning from the trip, these citizens and other Durham leaders convened Durham Connected by 25, a collaborative that aims to implement evidence-based initiatives to close the gaps in Durham?s network of programs and services for youth.

Current Work

Members of Durham Connected by 25 are working to address the gaps in Durham's services for youth, and have already made significant achievements, including:

• After applying to a program observed in Portland, Durham Technical Community College has received a $300,000 grant from the Gateway to College National Network to help out-of-school youth or those at serious risk of dropping out obtain a high school diploma and college credits.
• Durham Tech is developing Young Adult Basic Education, a remedial education program for young adults who are not able to test into Durham Tech's Gateway to College program or other GED programs in the city; after increasing their skills, these students move on to another program.
• Connected by 25 members are working on the East Durham Children's Initiative, based on the successful Harlem Children's Zone, a neighborhood-level program that intends to provide one of Durham?s poorest areas with comprehensive services supporting youth from birth through college.
• Youth jobs are the No. 2 issue on the agenda of Durham CAN (Congregations, Associations, and Neighborhoods), a grassroots community organization, and many candidates for local elections have pledged to increase the number of summer jobs for youth by 25%.

Participants in Connected by 25

Communities in Schools
Duke University Health System
Duke University Office of Durham and Regional Affairs
Durham At-Risk Youth Collaborative
Durham Congregations, Associations, and Neighborhoods (Durham CAN)
Durham City Council
Durham Board of County Commissioners
Durham County District Court
Durham Office of Economic and Workforce Development
Durham Public Schools
Durham Technical Community College
MDC
Triangle Community Foundation

The partners work in three workgroups, Workforce Development, Education, and Reconnection, which are open to the public. For more information, or if you are interested in joining one of the workgroups, please e-mail Christina Rausch at crausch@mdcinc.org.

For more information about Durham Connected by 25

Durham Connected by 25 Concept Paper
PowerPoint Presentation on Disconnected Youth in Durham