The National Partnership for Community Leadership (NPCL) announces the National Youth Development Practitioners Institute (YDPI), formerly known as the Youth Opportunity Grants Leadership Institute, to assist the U.S. Department of Labor's Youth Opportunity Grants (YOG) and Youth Offender Demonstration (YOD) sites with developing their programs.

The Youth Opportunity Grants (YOG) were authorized under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The current Youth Opportunity Grants and Youth Offender Demonstration sites offer a greater chance to build improved systems for serving our nation’s youth. NPCL's YDPI goals are to offer training based on best practices in youth development and employment to create better opportunities for our nation's most vulnerable youth. We support the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration's philosophy of the "Power of E 3, education, employment and economic development."

What is the Mission of the Youth Development Practitioners Institute?

To offer youth practitioners, both newly employed and senior level staff, exposure to creative and promising best practices and models in youth development and employment from across the country for working with urban, rural and Native American youth.

Who is the Institute designed to serve?

Project Directors, Trainers, Case Managers, Youth Specialists and Job Developers from agencies who provide quality services and training to support the developmental needs of our nation's future workforce. In addition, the Institute's experience and training is available to other practitioners working with youth who wish to obtain classroom credits for participating in the Institute.

How does the Institute operate?

The Institute offers managers, technical and front-line staff exposure to week-long training in a variety of subjects, exposing participants to
creative and effective models and practices tested in the field by practitioners, in an effort to better serve the developmental needs of our nation's youth. Through a unique multi-level approach to skill development, mentoring and job shadowing, training is offered through three modalities:

• Week-long national classroom sessions.
• Site specific customized training through a "classroom on wheels."
• A "Virtual Learning" component, offering on-line services and webcasting.

The Institute is a unique and bountiful learning experience into the "world of youth development" that provides participants with the opportunity to share their experiences as well as learn from experts working directly on the "front lines." The Institute challenges participants to think creatively as our team of expert trainers introduce and reinforce a variety of approaches and models for providing desperately needed services to youth. The work of youth practitioners is the foundation that unites and ties together communities and families to build leaders for our future.

Did you know that you could earn course credits toward the U.S. Department of Labor's Youth Development Apprenticeship?

The Institute provides a maximum of 270 credit hours toward the Youth Development Apprenticeship certification. The U.S. Department of Labor recognizes the occupation of Youth Development Practitioner as an apprenticeship occupation. Therefore, this recognition provides quality training for youth workers as they deliver comprehensive services to young people.

The Institute features training in the following areas:

• Youth Development
• Youth Employment
• Job Development - New Senior Level
• Human Dynamics
• Tools for Case Managers
• Attitudinal Development
• Managerial Techniques

Peer Learning College

 The goal of the Partners for Fragile Families initiative is to help low-income fathers share the legal, financial and emotional responsibilities of parenthood with the mothers of their children. We call the process "team parenting." Improving the interaction between the child support enforcement system and fathers of fragile families is a critical step in this process. One of our primary strategies is a series of Peer Learning Workshops for child support enforcement professionals, to encourage, support and assist those agencies that are addressing the special problems that fathers in fragile families present to the child support enforcement system. The purpose of the Peer Learning Workshop is to help children support enforcement officials:

• Establish the state of the art in programming related to child support enforcement and low-income fathers in fragile families.
• Isolate the salient aspects of these efforts for examination.
• Identify current systematic and policy barriers to effective child support enforcement for fathers in fragile families.
• Identify possible points of intervention for work with fathers to have them establish paternity and stay involved in their children’s lives.
• Identify strategies for developing orders responsive to the situation of low-income obligors and for effecting appropriate order modification.
• Develop strategies for cross-agency collaboration.
• Learn to work with community-based organizations.

Peer Learning Workshops operate at the national, regional and local levels. The national level focuses on policy issues and systematic barriers to working with fathers in fragile families, reinforcement of child support enforcement work with fathers in fragile families. Participation at this level is by invitation. Regional Peer Leaning Workshops are oriented more toward "nuts and bolts," emphasizing operational issues and partnership development. Local Workshops further emphasize partnership development, identification of non-traditional partners and action plans.

Peer Learning Workshops will serve as reinforcement to child support enforcement pioneers in the field of working with low-income fathers, and will encourage them to experiment with new approaches. They will help other public and private agencies to see how they can include fathers in the families they are mandated to serve. They will help academics focus their research on this difficult-to locate population of men. They will help politicians by providing them with knowledge of what child support and other programs have done and what needs to be done for fragile families. National Peer Learning Workshops will produce reports of information exchanged and policy issues identified, as well as issue papers for use by the field.

Fatherhood Development