New Ways to Work has been a leader in addressing workplace issues since our founding in 1972. Beginning with the invention, promotion, and definition of Job Sharing as a way to help women and others balance work with the rest of their life, we spent thirty years pioneering work-time alternatives - flex-time, telecommuting, and phased retirement to name a few - now all common practice in workplaces around the world. In the early 80's, our focus expanded to apply our workplace strategies to provide better access to high quality employment opportunities for youth enrolled in school or training programs.

For the past twenty years, New Ways has been at the center of efforts to improve the way our public systems and local programs prepare our young people for their future. Young people need better opportunities, both in and out of school, to gain the knowledge and skills critical for success in college and career. New Ways helps communities work together to build comprehensive youth-serving systems.

In the early 1980's, beginning with the development and refinement of the initial third-party brokering model in San Francisco, New Ways launched a network of youth employment brokering sites that grew to 14 communities in the New Ways Workers Network. Host entities, in partnership with local schools and youth-serving organizations, included community-based organizations, chambers of commerce, local governments, and Private Industry Councils. New Ways developed a "turn-key" approach to local system-building that connected schools with workplaces and employers with classrooms. New Ways provided network members with customized management software, detailed operational procedures, sophisticated marketing approaches, templates for all materials, regular training opportunities for program staff, on-line and telephone technical support, and regular opportunities for sharing information and ideas with other program sites.

Since the late 1980's, New Ways has also designed systems and developed tools, materials, and trainings that help practitioners engage workplace and community partners and provide high-quality, work-based learning experiences to support student learning. These efforts are known as The Quality Work-Based Learning Initiative (QWBL).

In the early 1990's, With the advent of School-to-Work in the early 1990's, New Ways became a founding partner of the Bay Area School-to-Career Action Network and facilitated the Northern California School-to-Career Practitioner's Network, an informal association of schools, community organizations, School-to-Work (STW) partnerships, technical assistance providers, and employer associations. These efforts served to launch CalSCAN (the California School-to-Career Action Network), facilitated by New Ways, which is alive and well today.

In 1997, New Ways Workers piloted an institute and training series with teams from 13 California STW partnerships on "Developing a Sustainable Infrastructure, Making and Managing the Employer Connection." As part of this effort, New Ways modified and created a workbook of systems planning and process tools, content-focused trainings and fact sheets, and implementation materials to help communities develop local STW partnerships.

In 1998 New Ways and Jobs for the Future joined with other national partners to implement the School-to-Work Intermediary Project, funded by the National School-to-Work office. This project promoted and strengthened intermediary practice and publicized the increasingly important role played by local intermediary organizations in improving education and supporting workforce and economic development in communities across the country.

In 1999 New Ways was selected by the California Department of Education to serve as the statewide capacity-building organization for Communities and Schools for Career Success (CS²) in California. The project is conducted in partnership with the Commonwealth Corporation of Massachusetts, The California Department of Education, and the California Workforce Investment Board. New Ways provides CS² with on-site coaching, technical assistance, training, and support to four California communities. CS² is primarily focused on bringing together community resources to assist youth in the transition from middle school to high school, and from high school to further education and training or career-laddered, entry-level employment.

In 2000 the California School-to-Career Inter-Agency Partners selected New Ways and a set of partners to conduct the Employer and Labor Engagement, Work-Based Learning Tool-Kit Project. Along with its partners, New Ways developed a range of tools, materials, and capacity-building and training activities designed to increase employer and labor participation in School-to-Career initiatives, as well as tools and strategies to provide safe and legal quality work-based learning opportunities.

In 2000 New Ways was identified by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Youth Services to coach seven Youth Opportunity Grantees (YOG) in effective start-up and implementation practices. Through this contract, New Ways staff and consultants provided on-the-ground technical assistance and training to newly developing, full-service youth centers in a number of cities, including three in California. New Ways supported the Office of Youth Services directly, adapting tools and materials to meet the needs of the YOG's around the country. New Ways designed the framework for all sites' initial work plans and the assessment utilized to measure their progress in the first year of implementation. New Ways also provided training and was responsible for the Employer Engagement track at the first annual gathering of the YO grantees.

In 2001 New Ways received funding from the California Workforce Investment Board to partner with the California Workforce Association (CWA) to develop the California Youth Council Institute. Through this project, New Ways and CWA built and supported a network of Youth Councils across the state focused on building comprehensive, locally-driven youth systems. Representatives of each of California's 50 Youth Councils participated in one or more YCi activities between 2001 and 2005. New Ways developed a set of tools and materials designed to support Youth Councils that seek to serve as a catalyst in developing comprehensive local youth development systems in their communities. Known as the All Youth - One System frameworks, these process, content, and planning tools serve to strategically support the efforts of local Youth Councils to be catalytic forces in their communities, building comprehensive and connected systems that serve all youth, especially those who are most in need of support. As a result of YCI, New Ways has provided follow-up technical assistance to many local Youth Councils across California as well as providing advice and support to other states.

In 2002 New Ways staff provided direct technical assistance to the California State Youth Council, which adopted the All Youth-One System frameworks. New Ways also received the 2002 Architect of Change, Innovation in Customer Service Award for the California Youth Council Institute from the National Association of State Workforce Agencies and the U.S. Department of Labor.

In 2003 participants in the federally funded School-to-Work Intermediary Project found their connections to be so valuable that they decided to create a self-funded network to sustain their work together beyond the funded activities of the project. They selected New Ways as the facilitating partner of the resulting Intermediary Network (INet). New Ways helped INet member organizations explore connections to the after-school and small schools movements and worked to support college access and success for under-represented populations. The two annual meetings of the Network members were filled to capacity, and the network grew, engaging new local and affiliate members. INet members leveraged over 18 million dollars in public and private investments and provided services to 89,000 students, 13,473 teachers, 2,000 schools and 6,422 employers. Members reported positive policy impacts at the state, regional, and local levels.

New Ways and its partner, the Bay Area Council, also supported The School Executive Leadership Initiative (SELI), which seeks to improve low performing schools by focusing on increasing the management and leadership skills of school leaders (primarily principals) and connecting them to private sector executives as coaches and resource brokers. School leaders were paired with private sector partners to support school improvement efforts and link principals with private sector resources. Quarterly learning academies brought schools and business leaders together to focus on high-need issues identified by the participating principals.

The Quality Work-Based Learning Initiative (QWBL) was active in a number of arenas during the early 2000's. Utilizing tools and frameworks developed for the state, New Ways facilitated several training and strategic planning sessions for over 400 educators and youth practitioners in California during 2003. 7,431 downloads were made of QWBL tools and materials from the New Ways website. In addition, New Ways helped the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools (KCK) link work-based learning to local academic standards. This work was supported with the implementation of the new toolkit developed by New Ways for KCK schools and launched in 2003-04 school year. New Ways QWBL activities were evaluated by Brandeis University, receiving high marks for the quality of the tools, training, and support activities provided through the initiative.

In 2004 New Ways helped design and facilitate two new transition-assistance initiatives in California: the Youth Transition Action Team Initiative (YTAT), focused on working with child welfare agencies, workforce boards, and others to ensure successful transitions for foster youth, and the Improving Transition Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities Project (ITOP), seeking to demonstrate how local intermediaries can help youth with disabilities make successful transitions to the workforce and independent living. In both cases, New Ways convened key stakeholders and helped them articulate goals and implementation strategies. New Ways also provides ongoing support and technical assistance.

In 2005 New Ways began implementation of the Youth Transition Action Team Initiative (YTAT) and the Improved Transition Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities Project (ITOP). The YTAT initiative involves twelve counties across the state of California, and the pilot activities of ITOP are focused in Shasta, Ventura, and San Francisco Counties. In addition, New Ways was selected to coordinate the expansion of the Diploma Plus initiative into California. Diploma Plus is a program designed not only to help those young people who are being left behind by our educational system graduate, but to be ready to successfully transition to college and careers. New Ways also began expanding the scope of the Youth Council Institute beyond California to reach a national audience of state and local Youth Councils in order to help even more Youth Councils improve young people's opportunities to succeed in postsecondary education, careers, and community and civic engagement.

Today, New Ways works with public and private funders, organizations, and communities that identify local challenges related to youth and the systems that serve them. New Ways provides services to help improve the quality of the academic, career support, and personal development experiences provided for young people though schools, training programs, community activities, and in the workplace.

New Ways supports the development of sustainable systems that leverage local resources and create powerful partnerships among schools, community, and the workplace. New Ways manages and implements several national and state-wide initiatives, including the National Intermediary Network, the Communities and Schools for Career Success (CS²) initiative, the Youth Council Institute (YCi), the Foster Youth Transition Action Teams initiative, and the Improving Transition Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities (ITOP) initiative.