Blog

Every month, America Forward is highlighting a few examples of the vital work being done by our Coalition members to support students, families, educators, workers, elected leaders, advocates, and communities across the country. If your organization has resources, an announcement, or a story that you would like to see included, please send it to america_forward@newprofit.org.

BellXCel

BellXcel is dedicated to supporting youth-serving organizations, ensuring they have the tools, resources, and capacity they need to run successful programming and improve outcomes for the communities they serve. As part of this effort, BellXcel offers a multitude of free online resources, including e-books on effective funding strategies, foundation building worksheets, and essential program planning procedures.

Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE)

The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) is committed to empowering both students and educators through high-quality educational programming that prepares students for success in a competitive workforce. To this end, ACTE offers a range of free resources, including reports, briefs, fact sheets and other publications focused on career and technical education policy, research and practice to support their community.

Envision Education (Envision Learning Partners)

On the third Thursday of each month, Envision Education is hosting free, virtual ELP Lounge sessions, a space to bring people together to hear from educators across the country, exchange stories, and “slow down to connect, share, learn, and heal.” The next Lounge session will be held next week, on Thursday October 20th at 5 p.m., featuring a discussion focused on measuring and standardizing college readiness.

MindRight

MindRight’s mission is to make mental health care accessible and inclusive, especially for young people who too often face barriers to accessing mental health services and supports. Through a recent partnership with AmeriHealth Caritas, a major D.C. Medicaid provider, MindRight has been able to expand this work to offer emotional coaching and support via text message to young people ages 13 – 20, who are insured through Medicaid.

Opportunity@Work and Per Scholas

Per Scholas recently joined Opportunity@Work and the Ad Council on a new collaboration, the “Tear the Paper Ceiling” campaign, aimed at removing barriers (the “paper ceiling”) to economic and workforce access for skilled job applicants who don’t hold a bachelor’s degree. This work builds on the organizations’ ongoing commitment to expanding opportunity and creating upward mobility for the over “70 million workers in the U.S. who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs), such as community college, workforce training, bootcamps, certificate programs, military service, or on-the-job learning, rather than through a bachelor’s degree,” and aims to collect at least 100,000 pledges to “tear the paper ceiling” by the end of the year.