The UNITE-LA National Strategic Partnerships (NSP) team is wrapping up their work with the Lumina Foundation, who funded a 1.3 million grant to bring together chambers of commerce, community colleges and community-based organizations that directly represent communities of color to develop and drive the growth of credentialing and degree programs in their regions with the ultimate goal of placing low-income workers, particularly BIPOC workers, in well-paid jobs with opportunities for career advancement.

Last month, the Los Angeles Opportunity Youth Collaborative (OYC) team organized the LA Opportunity Youth: Los Angeles Performance Partnership Pilot (LAP3) Strategic Planning Convening. The LAP3 is a government collective impact initiative, which is an unprecedented effort in Los Angeles to coordinate and integrate the delivery of education, workforce and social services to disconnected youth, ages 16-24. The strategic planning convening had close to 90 partners present at the meeting, which represented government, education and community-based organizations and more to give their feedback on developing a regional, shared agenda for improving the outcomes for Opportunity Youth, including systems-involved youth, across public and private partners.

We are excited for UNITE-LA's My Pathway to Health participants, as most have begun embarking on their trainings in an allied health pathway of their choice! Eleven have chosen the Medi-Cal Peer Support Specialist pathway with Futuro Health, and four are pursuing the WERC Community Health Worker program, which partners with L.A. County. We continue to work closely with three other participants helping to secure placements in CNA and MA programs.

Step into Tech participants are nearing the end of their six-week program. They have completed introductory courses for areas including networking, LinkedIn, financial empowerment and cybersecurity. They have all been excited about having the opportunity to learn about different career pathways in tech through meaningful conversations and engagement with tech professionals, as well as hands-on experience through courses on the Cisco Networking Academy. Cisco has been a dynamic partner throughout the process, ensuring participants were trained on the platform, knowledgeable about the courses and certifications offered, sharing and connecting participants with job opportunities and helping to secure speakers.

UNITE-LA’s programming team hosted its fifth Partner Open House in mid-August for 20 partners, including Homeboy Industries, L.A. County Probation, St. Anne’s, Antioch University, KIPP SoCal Public Schools, Kids in the Spotlight, LAUSD, YouthSource Center and others. The event provided partners the opportunity to learn about upcoming UNITE-LA programming directly from our team, which included information on the Tech Pathways Academy, powered by Microsoft, the launch of the fall LA Regional Cleantech Career Academy and Step into Tech cohorts, the next WorkforceReady Focused cohort and hosting L.A. Cash for College workshops and the related Affordable Connectivity Program.

UNITE-LA hosted its summer Future Forward Forum in August, featuring an exploration in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) with Executive Director of California Cyber Alliance, Eric Coughenour. It was a timely and thought-provoking conversation that inspired a great deal of engagement from attendees. Two of our tech training partners, NPower and Per Scholas, joined to provide an overview of their free cybersecurity training programs.

In July, UNITE-LA's Humberto Estratalan, Director of Public Policy, and Adam Gottlieb, Director of Postsecondary Strategy and Policy, spent time in Sacramento for UNITE-LA's second advocacy trip of 2023.

On Aug. 1, UNITE-LA was pleased to co-host a Regional Energy Policy Convening, in partnership with CA FWD, focused on the opportunities, barriers and resources needed to make energy independence and reliability a reality.

We are so pleased to share that, thanks to efforts from the Linked Learning Alliance, UNITE-LA and several other partners, this year's state budget will include full funding for the Golden State Pathways Program, which works to connect our education and workforce systems.