The Power of Us - How Better Understanding the Youth Fields Workforce Can Help Communities Thrive

Oct 15, 2026

The paper examines how understanding the youth fields workforce can strengthen community well-being and expand opportunities for young people to build interests and skills in supportive, low-stakes environments. It highlights the importance of youth-serving professionals in activating program vision, developing tools and systems, and sustaining relationships. It also points to policy and funding gaps that leave workers insufficiently qualified, supported, and sustainable, creating staff turnover and shortages. It describes a study intended to create national workforce data.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Background and Rationale

Youth-serving workers as a key driver

Policy gaps and workforce sustainability

Study Purpose and Design

Goals of the Youth Fields Workforce Survey

Longitudinal and qualitative research focus

Workforce Scope and Pathways

Volunteers and paid roles across sectors

Career trajectories and professional development

The Power of Us How Better Understanding the Youth Fields Workforce Can Help Communities Thrive Bronwyn Bevan, PhD, Vice President, Research, The Wallace Foundation Deborah Moroney, PhD, Vice President, American Institutes for Research Megan Brown, Principal Researcher, American Institutes for Research The great potential of the youth fields is to expand opportunities for young people to develop their interests and skills in socially supportive and low-stakes environments. The adults in these fields, therefore, are key. Youth fields professionals create the conditions in which young people can thrive: They activate the vision for high-quality programs; develop tools, systems, and approaches for designing and sustaining such programs; and form relationships with and among participating youth. Scholars including Bianca Baldridge (2014, 2018, 2019) and Dana Fusco (2012, 2013), among others, have documented the life-changing relationships young people can develop with youth-serving workers. Federal policies like the 21st Century Community Learning Centers and state policies like California’s Expanded Learning Opportunities Program recognize that out-of-school time programs serve broad educational and community well-being goals. But while investments in afterschool programming have continued to rise (Peterson, 2022; Neitzey, 2023), youth-serving workers have remained below the radar. Unlike in K–12 education, policies intended to expand and enrich youthserving programs have often focused on access and quality standards while neglecting the need for a workforce that is qualified, experienced, supported, and sustainable. Lack of support for workers’ pay, benefits, and growth opportunities leads to high staff turnover and staff shortages. These factors in turn undermine efforts on the part of policymakers, systems leaders, and program directors to meet their goals for young people. A profound absence of data hinders insight into A primary goal of the study is to help communities this critical part of the national workforce. For this think holistically about how they support adults whose reason, the American Institutes of Research (AIR) work supports young people. To do so, community approached The Wallace Foundation in 2021 to leaders need to understand who the youth-serving propose a study to create a national data set about the workforce is. How and why do youth-serving workers youth fields workforce. The goal of the resulting Power enter the field, and what is their career trajectory? Do of Us Youth Fields Workforce Survey is to enable they have access to professional training and tools? Are communities to better understand the youth-serving opportunities equitably distributed, or are particular workforce and support it to thrive.1 positions or benefits made available to some but not AIR led the youth fields study with a constellation all? To what extent do these workers see themselves of partners, including Collaborative Communications, as part of a broad youth fields community? Looking the National Institute on Out-of-School Time across the silos of youth-serving programming gives the (NIOST), Aleah Rosario of Partnership for Children study results the potential to support comprehensive and Youth, and independent consultants Dale Blyth community planning for youth-serving workers. and Rebecca Goldberg. The study includes the The Wallace Foundation has invested for many qualitative investigation led by NIOST that produced years in the systems and infrastructure—the tools, the Perspectives in this special issue of Afterschool organizations, and research—that underpin mature Matters. education systems. The Power of Us Workforce Survey A key dimension of both the quantitative and data can not only support planning but also facilitate qualitative arms was to consider longitudinal research on the key the full range of the youth fields actors who make the system work. workforce, including volunteers, Many peo

FAQs

Why does the youth fields workforce matter for community outcomes?

Youth fields professionals create conditions for young people to thrive by supporting high-quality programming, developing tools and systems, and building relationships among participating youth and workers.

What workforce problems are linked to policy and investment gaps?

The text argues that inadequate support for workers’ pay, benefits, and growth opportunities contributes to high turnover and staff shortages, undermining efforts to meet goals for young people.

What is the primary goal of the Power of Us Youth Fields Workforce Survey?

The study aims to create a national data set to help communities better understand who youth-serving workers are, how they enter the field, their career trajectories, and how equitably training and opportunities are distributed.

Oct 15, 2026

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