This America Succeeds report highlights the workplace value of durable skills: communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and leadership. TANF programs can integrate these into their case management or training to help participants build foundational and transferable skills for long-term career growth.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs play a critical role in helping families move toward employment, stability, and long-term economic mobility, including through the use of career pathways, which are connected sequences of education, training, and work experiences that help individuals progress through chosen fields. STAR has created a catalog of career pathway toolkits to help TANF programs plan career pathway initiatives. 

To accompany the Career Pathways Toolkit Catalog, these Starter Pathways are designed to help TANF administrators and staff navigate the toolkits more efficiently and intentionally. 

Users can begin with Starter Pathways to identify where to start planning based on their role and quickly access the most relevant toolkit sections based on their career pathways goals.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs play a critical role in helping families move toward employment, stability, and long-term economic mobility, including through the use of career pathways, which are connected sequences of education, training, and work experiences that help individuals progress through chosen fields. STAR has created a catalog of career pathway toolkits to help TANF programs plan career pathway initiatives. 

To accompany the Career Pathways Toolkit Catalog, these Guided Use Cases offer short, practical explainers that show how TANF programs can apply selected tools to common implementation challenges. TANF administrators and staff can use these Guided Use Cases to quickly identify which tools are most relevant, when to use them, and how they can support TANF program goals.

The need for a tech-savvy, well-prepared workforce continues to rise. This MDRC resource discusses the development of the partnership between NPower and Urban Alliance, which are two national nonprofits working to deliver digital literacy and IT training to high school students. This resource offers lessons for improving cross-organizational partnerships that support youth career pathways. It also describes the two programs developed during the partnership, discusses some of the challenges that the two organizations encountered during the development and implementation of the programs and how they addressed those challenges, and provides additional considerations for future partnerships.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation resource highlights the work of the Del Norte Work-Based Learning Ecosystem, which works to trans­form edu­ca­tion to bet­ter respond to stu­dents and help schools and dis­tricts in strength­en­ing or imple­ment­ing work-based learn­ing programs. Indi­vid­u­al­ized youth intern­ships are keep­ing stu­dents at Del Norte High School in Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, on track to achieve aca­d­e­m­ic and career goals. By intern­ing at orga­ni­za­tions that address homelessness, these stu­dents are build­ing aca­d­e­m­ic and occu­pa­tion­al skills as they con­tribute to their communities.

Apprenticeships can be a powerful model for workforce development but too often completion rates fall short. Apprenticeships for America will host a webinar on September 25, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET to explore the challenges and strategies behind improving apprenticeship completion rates.

Successful apprenticeship initiatives often begin with the development of a strong employer partnership. Intermediaries play a key role in educating the employer about the benefits of apprenticeships, assisting in the development of the apprenticeship, and providing support for the operation of the apprenticeship. Apprenticeships for America will host a webinar on October 16, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET to offer two examples of such partnerships from the manufacturing and healthcare industries. The panel will explore:

• How their partnerships developed;
• Key factors and strategies that contributed to the success of the partnerships;
• Challenges that needed to be addressed and the solutions that were developed;
• How the partnerships contribute to apprentice retention and completion; and
• Suggestions for other intermediaries and employers.

This brief examines how the Urban Institute, partnered with Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation America, supported employers in designing and launching youth apprenticeship programs by drawing on five years of experience as federally funded intermediaries. The brief outlines what works in employer outreach, program design and registration, and support for employers’ mentoring and scaling efforts.

Apprenticeship training and college are often considered substitutes for each other, when they in fact work best as complements. This WorkRise resource analyzes administrative apprenticeship data to better understand how colleges have engaged with the apprenticeship system, and the experiences of apprentices in college-sponsored apprenticeship programs.