YouthForce NOLA Transit Paper Highlights Collaborative Approach to Policy Change

YouthForce NOLA (YouthForce), an education, business, and civic collaborative opening doors to economic opportunity for New Orleans students, released a policy paper today entitled: “A Collaborative Approach to Policy Change: Lessons Learned from Achieving Transit Improvements for Youth.”

The policy paper explains how YouthForce played a key role, in collaboration with Ride New Orleans (RIDE) and the Regional Planning Commission (RPC), to ensure that youth needs, interests, and voices were included in New Links, the New Orleans region’s plan for a redesigned public transit network. Through this collaboration, more efficient transit routes were added for young people to attend technical training and travel to meaningful work experiences. 

“In addition to specific transit system improvements for youth, this project piloted a process and established an expectation for youth interests and youth voice to be taken into account in the future,” said Cate Swinburn, YouthForce president & CEO. “By working together, YouthForce Policy Director David Shepard, RIDE Executive Director Courtney Jackson and RPC Transportation Planner Samuel Buckley demonstrated that collaboration is crucial in order to make meaningful policy changes, especially for our young people.”

Read the full policy paper here.