The YouthBuild Philly Learning Exchange: A New Resource Promoting Effective Practices for City Youth and Young Adults

For more than a quarter-century YouthBuild Philly has been a leader in planning, designing, and delivering high-quality education and training opportunities for young people seeking a second chance to earn a high school diploma, gain industry-recognized credentials, and get a good job. Reengaging students who were pushed out or dropped out of high school requires authentic relationship and community building with students who have weathered tough life experiences. Year after year, YouthBuild Philly brings together young adults from 47 different zip codes, and makes them feel like part of one big family, and produce such positive results.

The Learning Exchange is born out of YouthBuild’s Philly’s long track record of successfully building the culture and the relationships that make organizations thrive. YouthBuild Philly has become a magnet for teachers, administrators, and other professionals eager to learn the ingredients of the “secret sauce” which enabled the school. 

To extend these benefits to more students, communities, and organizations, in 2017, YouthBuild Philly established the Learning Exchange, an innovative training model designed to help youth practitioners and other interested adults expand their knowledge and skills in order to meet the education and employment needs of young Philadelphians.

The school was eager to accommodate the steady stream of visitors, but leaders began to wonder if there might be a better way to work with these practitioners to share experiences and lessons learned. After several months of research and analysis, they concluded that a new vehicle—the YouthBuild Philly Learning Exchange—was the best way to work and share knowledge with interested educators and other youth-focused professionals.      

After design and pilot phases, the Learning Exchange was launched in May 2018. In director Robin Walker’s words, the Exchange is “a community space that brings people together to learn from one another, where YouthBuild Philly can share program knowledge and best practices, and where practitioners can learn what makes YouthBuild’s learning strategies so effective for young people.” 

The Exchange offers three specific strands of focus and exploration, selected based on the questions most frequently asked by YouthBuild’s visitors: 

1. Cohesive Culture, which promotes building and sustaining a positive organizational climate and culture, through the use of restorative practices effectively across a school community, and creating systems and structures to drive organizational culture.

2. Partnerships, which focuses on creating and growing meaningful partnerships that benefit young people and partner organizations, including with employers, postsecondary institutions, and the broader community.

3. Culture of Learning, which develops the capacity to implement high-quality, competency-based education models. 

According to Walker, the sessions are powerful because “the content is created and delivered by people doing the work on a daily basis, using real-life examples of relevant experiences.” The open-space sessions feature real-time problem-solving and other reality-based protocols and strategies. Importantly, Exchange participants are asked in advance to share their specific interests and needs, which allows YouthBuild facilitators to build a responsive curriculum and framework. 

Another key factor is that the Exchange provides an opportunity for candid exploration not only of what has worked, but also what hasn’t. Such honest sharing among participants helps to build trust and encourages the creation of effective solutions. “This isn’t plug and play,” Walker explains. “You don’t walk away with a specific model, but rather with new tools and ideas you can adapt for your own organization.” 

For practitioner teams wanting to delve deeper into the content, the Exchange offers 12-week coaching sessions providing individualized support by experienced YouthBuild staff. Teams participating in coaching identify specific topics for further exploration and clarify where they would like to be on the issues after the coaching is completed. Based on these factors, the Exchange develops specific curricula and program content to guide the 12-week learning experience. Participants also identify a “champion team” which will be responsible for guiding the work going forward.  

To-date, about 30 organizations have participated in the Exchange, mostly schools and youth-serving organizations but also some private, for-profit corporations. Thanks to support from the SpringPoint and William Penn Foundations, Exchange programming is grant sponsored for interested organizations (individualized private sessions are offered on a fee-for-service basis).

After 18 months of operation, Walker is optimistic about the Exchange’s progress and is looking forward to the future. Possible new areas for consideration and emphasis include strategies to prepare career counselors in youth-serving organizations to talk and interact with employers more effectively , as well as approaches to help young people understand the realities of the workplace and how to function effectively as employees. Further, the Exchange understands the need to incorporate more student voice and to be intentional about social identity. “We need to name and honor the population we serve,” says Walker. “All the work is built on serving the students; we have to maintain that close contact.”

As to metrics, the Exchange is tracking quantitative measures like the number of organizations served and young people affected, and is also working with participants to try to identify organizational changes that have resulted. There are also on-going efforts to collect information in the form of stories, anecdotes, and other examples of impact from participants.

With regard to long-term sustainability, the Exchange is committed to its work going forward in ways that train more people to do this work while making smart decisions about the long-term needs and goals of YouthBuild Philly.   

“We believe it’s important to share these practices with our peers so that many more young people can benefit from them,” says Walker. “YouthBuild can serve only 225 young people annually but we know thousands more need support from skilled, caring adults. We want to do our part to make that happen.”  

If you are interested in learning more about the YouthBuild Philly Learning Exchange, please contact Robin Walker, Learning Exchange Director at rwalker@youthbuildphilly.org or visit http://thelearningexchangephilly.org/.

About YouthBuild

The YouthBuild model was established in 1990 to expand education and employment opportunities for low-income youth and young adults in East Harlem. The model blended academic instruction, occupational skills training typically focused on construction trades, and a strong emphasis on positive youth development principles and caring and supportive environments.  

YouthBuild Philadelphia was founded in 1992 as one of the first and largest YouthBuild replication sites and quickly established itself as one of the most important programs in the city focused on providing high-quality employment and education programming for young Philadelphians who had left high school without secondary credentials. 

After the enactment of charter school legislation in Pennsylvania in 1997, YouthBuild Philadelphia successfully applied for a charter and became YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School. In subsequent years the school’s occupational focus expanded beyond construction trades to include information technology and business administration (2002); childcare and development (2013); and retail and service sectors (2014). 

Today, YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School combines a year of accelerated academics with occupational training and service learning, and a second year of follow-up and support. The school is recognized as one of the city’s leading education and training institutions preparing youth and young adults for high school completion, postsecondary access and success, and family-sustaining employment, while stressing the values of community, family, and mutual support.