Research has shown us the “college or bust” mentality doesn’t work for everyone.
A study conducted by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium showed that 26% of
Baltimore City Public Schools’ class of 2009 were not connected to either education or the
workforce the Fall after graduation. That same population was only making an average annual
salary of $11,000 six years after graduation. This illustrated the need for a career pipeline for
students who wanted to enter the workforce after high school graduation into
family-supporting wages.
To meet this need, Grads2Careers, a collaboration between Baltimore’s Promise, Baltimore City
Public Schools (City Schools), and the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development (MOED),
along with various occupational skills training providers, was launched in 2018. Since then, G2C
has fostered strong systemic partnerships, boosted wages, and provided free occupational
skills training in high-growth industries to more than a thousand youth and young adults.
We are proud of this work—but much more needs to be done. Baltimore’s Promise has
developed a plan for the exciting next phase of the G2C initiative, called CareerBound, and we
believe it will create opportunities for thousands of young people, lead to stronger alignment
of resources from multiple partners, and transform how we provide workforce services to youth
and young adults in our city.