Reconnecting Our Youth and Vets to Opportunity

Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) compels you to take action. Surrounded by philanthropists, community leaders, social entrepreneurs, educators and politicians, you can’t help but witness the impacts and feel the energy pulsing through the crowd.

I enjoyed fueling some of that energy when I joined the co-founder and CEO of General Assembly (GA), Jake Schwartz, on stage last Tuesday as Chelsea Clinton announced our CGI America Commitment to Action, focused on bringing relevant job skills and opportunities to disenfranchised youth and veterans.

While it’s unnerving to stand awash in bright lights on stage in front of hundreds for what feels like an eternity, it is an important public step in holding us all accountable to find solutions for the 6.7 million young people who are currently neither employed nor pursuing education. When you make a public declaration of a goal, you are much more likely to keep it.

 Through AT&T Aspire, AT&T’s CGI America Commitment to Action is Powering Career Skills: New Educational Pathways to Today’s Technology Careers. With a $250,000 contribution to GA’s Opportunity Fund scholarship program, we are opening the door for 20 opportunity youth and veterans to take GA’s full-time, 12 week Web Development Immersive (WDI) course and User Experience Design (UXDI) course in San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. as well as 50 scholarships for an online web design course. This is the first time in the program’s history that Opportunity Fund recipients will have the option of taking online courses.

As a company that hires about 25,000 employees every year, we’re focused on new programs and opportunities that make tech training accessible, affordable and efficient. These scholarships do just that.