Talking About Young People’s Futures

Communicating About Young People’s Education and Career Journeys: A Guide is a resource that distills communications-related insights and findings from three projects: Striving to Thriving, the Social Capital Messaging Project, and the Pathways Narrative Project. All three projects focused on understanding aspects of how young people form their occupational identities, make decisions about their futures, navigate through their journeys–and how people, including family members and other adults, can support their journeys.

Taken together, the three projects represent a collective, ongoing effort to hear directly from young people about how they see themselves and their journeys through education, work experiences, and life. Overall, young people’s perspectives and voices are often underrepresented in stories about policies, programs, and issues that directly affect them. This communications guide serves as both a reminder of how important it is to center young people’s voices and experiences in efforts to guide them through their education to work journeys and also contains specific insights about what language and framing resonates best with young people and other audiences.

The guide offers the top communications takeaways gathered from each of the projects, with accompanying explanations. In addition, readers can access more information about each project and learn about other helpful resources related to specific recommendations.