As a startup nonprofit organization, we are constantly learning and adapting our programs and strategy. In the past two years, we have been excited to work with many partners across the state to launch youth apprenticeship programs in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Eagle, Loveland and Estes Park. As we have expanded geographically across the state, we have been excited to see how successful our apprentices are in the workplace—very quickly learning real skills and creating value for their employers.
We have also learned that deep readiness is required in a community in order to provide the foundation for successful launch; the youth apprenticeship system we are building is complex, requires coordination and cooperation across silos and necessitates a broad range of supports from CareerWise to participating business, students and their schools. We believe it is important for us to continue to strengthen the strong and successful foundation established in the first two years by going deeper with our existing community partners so we can learn how the program works with a critical mass of apprentices that drive systemic change.
As a result, CareerWise is extending the timeline for the new-community readiness and application processes and will launch the next round of our new application process in the second half of 2019.
The timeline extension ensures that both CareerWise as an intermediary organization and the new communities interested in implementing a modern youth apprenticeship system have the right pieces in place for success. It also enables us to further build upon and learn from the system as we add more and more students in the same education-industry ecosystems.
During the next year, CareerWise will work with interested communities to help them understand what readiness looks like to enable a strong foundation of work-based learning opportunities that will support a successful future launch of apprenticeships.
If you are interested in building toward a future launch of youth apprenticeships in your community, please feel free to take a look at our updated community readiness framework below to understand elements and partnerships needed in place in anticipation of a application. This framework was built on lessons learned from successful engagement with multiple communities over the past two years, as well as others who have determined they are not yet ready to implement a youth apprenticeship program. It was also informed by lessons learned by a number of strong sector partnership across the state.
While readiness preparation is complex and may involve a few heavy lifts in your community, the good news is that CareerWise Colorado and a number of state agencies are available to help you with different components of your planning. Throughout the framework detail, look for suggestions for organizations who you might want to reach out to for help with that component of the framework.
Please feel free to reach out to us at newcommunities@careerwisecolorado.org to schedule a phone call with a member of our team to learn more about the readiness framework or our application process for expanding to new communities in future years.