NOYN earns $300K grant from Aspen Institute

Newark Opportunity Youth Network (NOYN) recently received the Building Ecosystems for Youth Opportunity (BEYO) grant valued at $300,000 from the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. NOYN intends to pass $150,000 of the grant funds directly to local community-based organizations (CBOs) as part of NOYN’s plan to strengthen the overall youth workforce ecosystem in the city which focuses on providing more high-quality seats to opportunity youth.

In 2019, Newark was named an Aspen community, alongside almost 40 other communities nationwide serving opportunity youth - young people 16-24 who are disconnected from school or employment - with a plan to build a youth workforce development ecosystem to support youth employment. According to Aspen, “The BEYO grants will invest in a subset of communities with the most promising scaling strategies that support and reinforce efforts to build local opportunity youth-serving ecosystems with a focus on postsecondary and workforce system partners.”

NOYN’s scaling strategy is rooted in its role as the backbone of the Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative, Newark’s first collective approach to creating a school-to-workforce pipeline for the city’s youth. Alongside the Collaborative’s Advisory Committee made up of Schools That Can, Newark Alliance, and Newark Youth One Stop, NOYN works to support direct-service providers through professional development, technical assistance, fundraising, and more.

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“Even from the early days of YouthBuild Newark, we have been laying the groundwork for this city-wide strategy with our partners for nearly 20 years,” said Robert Clark, Chief Executive Officer of NOYN. “We are grateful that Newark’s efforts continue to be supported by a variety of national organizations, including the Aspen Institute, JP Morgan Chase, and Prudential Financial, among others. The Collaborative is excited to put the wheels in motion on a plan to reach even more young people throughout the city.”

The Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative brings together leaders in education and workforce development, as well as local employment partners, to create an ecosystem that collectively shares data, creates pathways for career exploration, expands internships and apprenticeships, advocates for policy changes, and addresses wraparound supports for youth as they transition into the workforce. 

“NOYN and its partners have demonstrated an impressive, sustainable scaling plan that leverages public and private funding toward serving opportunity youth,” said Monique Miles, Vice President at the Aspen Institute and Managing Director of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. “By tying together education and workforce development, and increasing their service footprint through partnerships with local CBOs, NOYN is creating a blueprint for other OY-serving organizations to follow. We are proud to support their efforts.”

The funds from the BEYO grant will be used by NOYN to build out the infrastructure of the Collaborative, including staffing and data sharing systems, as well as pass-through funding to Program Partners, members of the Collaborative who provide direct education and workforce development services to young people.

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“We’re excited for NOYN to receive this grant from the Aspen Institute. Both organizations have been long standing partners of Prudential, driving better employment prospects for opportunity youth to help close the financial divide,” said Sarah Keh, Vice President, Inclusive Solutions at Prudential. “We know that access to strong workforce training and credentialing leads to quality jobs, which expands opportunities for economic mobility. NOYN is well positioned to lead this collaborative and we are proud to be long term supporter of their work as part of our $180M opportunity youth initiative.”

NOYN is currently accepting applications from organizations interested in joining the Collaborative. For more information, visit www.newark-oyn.org.

A full list of members of the Newark Youth Workforce Collaborative is included below:


Newark Opportunity Youth Network

Schools That Can

Newark Youth One Stop

Newark Alliance

La Casa de Don Pedro

Leaders for Life, Inc.

United Community Corporation

Urban League of Essex

Essex County College Training, Inc.




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