BY ELENA MARSH
Staff Writer
Moore County is set to join The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in its statewide project connecting young adults to resources to better their futures in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina Across 100 initiative (CX100) has announced its final program, “Our State, Our Future,” to improve young people’s access to workforce development, mental health resources and housing.
The project, which has crossed the threshold of engaging with all 100 counties in North Carolina, will involve forum-based discussions with community leaders at Sandhills Community College, the county school system, Sandhills Community Action and local businesses.
Since 2022, CX100 has worked with local leaders in 84 counties to grow local economies with youth workforce participation, mental health improvements and housing affordability. Our State, Our Future connects non-profits, government agencies and companies to build the relationships that support collaboration.
The methods to be used in Moore County draw on lessons from prior CX100 programs and adapt them to local contexts.
“Carolina Across 100 has provided communities with the campus expertise, funding and peer support needed to make real, lasting progress on the issues that matter most to their communities,” said Anita Brown-Graham, lead coordinator of Carolina Across 100, ncIMPACT Director, and Professor at the School of Government. “While this initiative is coming to a close, the commitment of our campus to the State of North Carolina remains steadfast.”
Our State, Our Future will support a cohort of 10 teams from 19 counties as they develop supportive systems to address challenges faced by young people between the ages of 16 and 24.
In a survey of over 3,000 responses from across the state, respondents said the greatest challenges to overcome were related to educational disruptions, alarming statistics related to suicide and mental health issues and housing affordability.
“ Moore County has determined that it wants to focus primarily on serving young adults,” said Brown-Graham. “Helping them, particularly those who have somehow fallen between the cracks, to reconnect to educational pathways that take them to a living wage job. That’s pretty exciting for the county, because it’s a county where there are lots of economic development opportunities.”
Brown-Graham said that UNC will help study and break down what the labor force in the county looks like and if there are enough people who can actually fill the jobs the county might need. From there, stakeholders can work around workforce development and build a system that helps to recapture some of the missing labor potential in the county.
Moore County will participate in a year-long capacity-building initiative with three in-person forums, monthly webinars and additional engagement opportunities with Carolina faculty, staff and students. The first forum beginning in April is set to be hosted in Chapel Hill gathering initial input for learning and action.
“ All of these different actors are doing the best job they can,” said Brown-Graham. “The K-12 system, the community college, workforce development board and community action agencies, they’re all working really hard, but they’re not always working together.
“Our initiative helps all of these actors come together so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
The activities will familiarize teams with principles of effective community collaboration and strategies for addressing community challenges. Participating communities’ increased civic capacity will lay the foundation for improved youth employment outcomes, stronger mental health, and greater housing stability.
The success of the project is measured in three parts. The first is to ensure that the participants in the project walk away with the skills and knowledge they need to make a bigger impact on the community. Each participant is expected also to follow up and share the ways that the new partnerships in the community have helped them achieve their goals.
A third measure of success comes from the groups themselves which co-design for them what success looks like. Each quarter the groups share with the UNC team what they’re accomplishing.
“For example, if their collective goal across teams is to reengage a certain number of young adults and connect them to living wage jobs, we are able to determine whether they are accomplishing that or exceeding that accomplishment,” said Brown-Graham.
Learn more about the Our State, Our Future program by visiting https://carolinaacross100.unc.edu/our-state-our-future/.
Contact Elena Marsh at (910) 693-2484 or elena@thepilot.com.
