Because They’re Worthy: Opportunity Youth and the Need for Genuine Engagement

By: Arienne J. Jones, Senior Program Manager, Justice and Equity, Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions

This blog post is part of a March 2025 series highlighting the Creating Youth Opportunities (CYO) initiative, a ULC program that directly supports the capacity of 11 participating libraries to serve a total of 222 communities and reach more than 411,000 opportunity youth. The blog series features several guest authors, including partners and library staff who participate in the CYO program.

In 2022, the American Library Association (ALA) conducted a survey of 2,075 members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations on their relationships with public libraries. Of the respondents, 54 percent stated that they had visited a physical public library within the previous 12 months for both reading and non-literature resources. Members of Gen Z are of particular interest; they currently range in age from approximately 13 to 28, which places opportunity youth firmly in this bracket. This means that Gen Z is filled with youth and young adults who are on the cusp of full adulthood, filled with boundless potential, and who both need and deserve communities and spaces that are responsive to them.

Who are Opportunity Youth?

Opportunity youth (OY) are youth and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are disconnected from school and/or work, meaning that these young people have not attained at least their high school diploma or its equivalent and/or are not employed in a tax-paying job. Opportunity youth often come from communities experiencing higher levels of socioeconomic issues and have experienced some of the attendant consequences of this, including housing insecurity and involvement with the child welfare and criminal legal systems. They are vastly overrepresented by members of racial and ethnic minorities, with Native American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, Black, and Latino youth accounting for a collective 70.9% of opportunity youth.

Opportunity youth have always existed in American society to some extent, with language and interventions targeted towards them evolving over the last three decades from the problematic “juvenile delinquents” to opportunity youth. The transition to the language of opportunity youth and focused, genuinely constructive efforts to reengage these young people began in the early 2010s. Around this time, the amount of opportunity youth exceeded 12%. By the end of the decade, the rate of opportunity youth had dropped to 10.7%. However, the pandemic brought about a temporary spike, with the rate of opportunity youth peaking at 12.6% in 2020. This number has since dropped to nearly pre-pandemic levels; by the end of 2022, the amount of opportunity youth had receded to approximately 10.9%, or approximately 4.3 million young people ages 16 to 24.

Why is it Important to Support Opportunity Youth?

All young people deserve the opportunity to thrive. This includes those who, through little to no fault of their own, have become disconnected from school or work or who are at risk of so becoming. Opportunity youth have just as much potential for greatness as other young people in their age group; they simply need a little more support. When opportunity youth are reconnected with school and/or work, their involvement in the criminal legal system lessens, health outcomes improve, and their earning potential increases.

Further, investing in opportunity youth lessens strain on the social safety net; indeed, a 2012 study estimated that each opportunity youth who is not reconnected would cost taxpayers about $13,890 per year and $250,000 during their lifetime, including the costs associated with welfare and social service payments, lost tax revenue, taxpayer-funded healthcare, and involvement with the criminal legal system. This means that collective community efforts to reengage opportunity youth have the potential to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year, increase communal safety, generate additional tax revenue, and fill some of the nation’s nine million (as of December 2023) job openings.

How Can You Genuinely Engage with, and Create Space for, Opportunity Youth?

Youth have the right to represent their own interests and the expertise to thrive in decision-making roles for issues that impact them. With this in mind, when considering how to engage with opportunity youth in more than ceremonial ways, there are various steps that organizations, including public libraries, can take. First, organizations can reach out to opportunity youth for feedback and recommendations on youth needs and desires as it relates to their work. This initial step can provide organizations with preliminary ideas for potential programming that will both attract and retain youth interest and participation. Organizations can also utilize a participatory engagement framework, which allows young people to have an actual seat at the table by reserving memberships on boards and/or creating youth councils. In doing this, organizations should ensure that they are not only creating physical space for these young people, but also genuinely listening to their voices and committing to incorporating their ideas in relevant areas.

Organizations can further engage with opportunity youth by having adults partner with young people to make key decisions. This youth-adult partnership has the benefit of being a reciprocal learning approach that allows both sides to experience growth in their skills and knowledge, while also ensuring that young people are being engaged because of their expertise and not just in ceremonial or tokenizing ways. Organizations can also allow youth and young adults to initiate and lead advocacy and programming since they are best attuned to the needs of their community; doing so allows young people to speak to their own needs and guide organizations and individuals on how to help meet those needs.

By taking these and other intentional steps, organizations have the chance to positively impact the life trajectory of young people by allowing them to gain advocacy, community organizing, program design, and other critical workforce and life skills.

Questions for Library Staff to Consider When Creating Space for Youth

The idea of creating intentional space for, and genuinely engaging with, young people can be daunting if this is an unfamiliar way of connecting with them. To begin this process, a few questions organizations can ask themselves are:

• What infrastructure(s) currently exists for supporting young people at your organization? That is, do you offer relevant trainings, paid internships or other funded opportunities, board memberships, etc.?
• What opportunities do young people have to provide input and feedback into your organization/program, including both implementation and strategy?
• Do young people have space to shape and design programs?
• Are the voices of young people centered/uplifted in the advocacy/policy arm of your work?

Answering these questions can help inform an organization’s next steps as they think about how to work with and thrive in partnership with young people.

Public libraries are one of the last truly equitable spaces in the United States. Given this privilege, there is great opportunity within library systems to create robust and fulfilling relationships with opportunity youth by creating space for them to share their expertise, lived experiences, and unique perspectives; providing them with leadership and growth opportunities through board and/or youth council memberships; and working in partnership with young people to co-create programs and opportunities that are responsive to their articulated needs and dreams.

Read this article on urbanlibraries.org.