THE LEVITAN YOUTH POLICY NETWORK
Program: THE LEVITAN YOUTH POLICY NETWORK
Sponsor: Sar Levitan Center
IPS Staff: Marion Pines, Michael Ford, and Karen Garrido
Purpose and Approach
In 1995, the Sar Levitan Center was created at IPS to carry on the work of Sar Levitan, a noted social policy analyst and practitioner who devoted his life to various public policy issues dealing mainly with disadvantaged populations. The Levitan Center convenes an informal group of national researchers, policy leaders, foundation officers, and practitioners, known as the Levitan Youth Policy Network, to focus on the serious challenges presented by the growing number of out-of-school youth. The group meets several times a year to discuss youth policy issues, describe the demographic changes, research guiding principles on what works, think creatively about existing funding streams that might be redi-rected, develop long-range strategies for sustained public support, and lay out a blueprint for connect-ing activities. In addition, the Center has held focus groups with youth around the country to better understand their perspectives.
Results
Since the Levitan Center’s publication of Generation of Challenge in 1997, Center staff have pre-sented findings to many national organizations, from the National Center on Education and the Econ-omy to the National Association of Service and Volunteer Corps. This publication led to several sub-sequent monographs. For a listing, see www.levitan.org.
Building a comprehensive system of services for out-of-school youth, the Levitan Center has organized one- and two-day training symposia for over 200 urban areas, the U.S. Department of Labor, and state youth development agencies since 1997.
