Comprehensive Services for Opportunity Youth 1

Comprehensive Services for 

Opportunity Youth

▌Resource List

Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs

youth.gov: This website helps create, maintain, and strengthen effective youth programs. Included are youth facts, 

funding information (https://youth.gov/funding-search), and tools to help assess community assets, generate 

maps of local and federal resources (https://youth.gov/map-my-community), search for evidence-based youth 

programs, and keep up-to-date on the latest youth-related news. Visit youth.gov and sign up for the e-newsletter!

Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection

Youth Employment Success (YES): This initiative provides technical assistance to youth employment 

programs to help them integrate financial capability offerings, including expanding access to financial 

products to help young adults manage their paychecks as well as helping programs provide relevant 

financial education and empowerment resources on basic money management skills. (https://bit.ly/2DPmOOv)

• Resources for Youth Employment Programs Website: https://bit.ly/2KD5jCk

Department of Agriculture

• 4-H Youth Futures-College within Reach: This program promotes college as an obtainable goal

and provides mentoring services and support to under-represented, vulnerable and firstgeneration high-school youth. (https://bit.ly/2SkZ0WZ)

• JUNTOS (Together for a Better Education): This program works to unite community partners to provide Latino 8-

12th grade students and their parents with knowledge, skills, and resources to prevent youth from dropping out 

and to encourage families to work together to gain access to college. (http://juntosnc.com/)

• Partnering for School Success: This program focuses on family and school environments to increase academic 

achievement to improve school success for Latino students. (https://bit.ly/2SktM29)

Department of Housing and Urban Development

• Project SOAR: This program focuses on helping low-income youth complete their financial aid 

forms and enroll in post-secondary education programs. (https://bit.ly/2Sj8Bx9)

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 

Youth Employment Website: Includes a crosswalk of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act 

(WIOA) financial literacy element to the Money Smart curricula, a toolkit to help workforce providers 

understand how to help their clients choose an account, and information for providers wishing to work with 

financial institutions to conduct bank fairs. (www.fdic.gov/youthemployment)

• Outreach and Program Development: This program primarily focuses on: 1) activities to ensure that everyone, 

especially low- and moderate-income individuals, are equipped with fundamental financial education tools, and 2) 

promoting access to safe and affordable checking/savings accounts at insured financial institutions.

National Endowment for the Arts 

The Arts Endowment provides grants in arts education to nonprofit organizations for projects 

that support job training and workforce development opportunities for youth (https://bit.ly/2TWzWai). For example: 
Resource List

Comprehensive Services for Opportunity Youth 2

• Storycatchers Theatre (aka Storycatchers): In Chicago, this program supports a post-release performing arts jobs 

program for court-involved youth where professional teaching artists use creative nonfiction and performing arts 

to guide young people who have been recently released from detention through a creative process to help them 

develop the skills to navigate reentry successfully. (https://bit.ly/2PZZwNm)

• Eskolta School Research and Design, Inc. (aka Eskolta): In New York, this grant supports a multidisciplinary arts 

program to provide arts instruction for over-age and under-credited students with histories of chronic truancy 

and/or special needs to build art-making skills and re-engage youth in their studies, strengthen social-emotional 

competencies, and offer potential career paths. (http://eskolta.org/)

Office of Adolescent Health

Pregnancy Assistance Fund: Grantees provide services that assist expectant and parenting young people 

to attain their educational/work goals while supporting their young families, including parenting skills 

information, case management, education support, concrete supports (e.g., food, diapers, clothes), healthy 

relationship education, health care services, home visiting services, and child care. (https://bit.ly/2w0EZfn)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 

SAMHSA funds a comprehensive array of grant programs for young people to stay 

connected to school and employment opportunities:

• Project AWARE and Safe Schools/Healthy Students: Through these grant programs, states and the 3 LEAs partner 

with focus on comprehensive school mental health systems that include mental health promotion and preventionoften schools- implement a multi-tiered system of supports and services. (https://bit.ly/2hrvNsE & https://bit.ly/2FM7HrS)

• Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma (ReCAST): This grant program supports youth living in 

communities that have experienced civil unrest, with many of the grantees engaging youth at school and through 

community-based organizations. (https://bit.ly/2r8IZYz)

• Healthy Transition: This program has a focus on outreach and engagement strategies to connect young people to 

resources to help them maintain their health and develop skills to lead full, productive lives. (https://bit.ly/2EGhEWL)

SAMHSA also provides technical assistance through the following Centers:

• The TA Network supports communities funded by SAMHSA's Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services 

for Children and Their Families Program and provides information through the following programs 

(https://www.samhsa.gov/nttac/about):

• Resource: Providing Youth and Young Adult Peer Support through Medicaid (https://bit.ly/2PbMDuo)

• SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR): This program is designed to increase access to the disability 

income benefit programs for eligible adults who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness and have a serious 

mental illness, medical impairment, and/or a co-occurring substance use disorder. (https://bit.ly/2eM4YPr)

• Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research: This TA and research center provides many resources and 

publications for transition aged youth on employment and educational support services. (https://bit.ly/2BD6XRB)

U.S. Agency for International Development 

• Guiding Principles for Building Soft and Life Skills Among Adolescents and Young Adults: This report 

identifies six guiding principles for effective skill-building programs for youth, with specific examples of 

effective practices, citing international and U.S. youth programs across the fields of workforce 

development, violence prevention, and sexual and reproductive health. (https://bit.ly/2QkgkOr)