Aspen Forum for Community Solutions

10/07/2026

🎬 “What are you teaching me today?”

That was the question Nancy Radwan kept asking during her summer internship with Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc. — six words that helped turn a hands-on learning experience into clarity about her future.

Passionate about filmmaking and curious whether the creative arts could offer a viable career path, Nancy spent six days behind the scenes at the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, shadowing producers, working alongside camera crews, shooting live sets, and learning by doing.

She left with more than new skills. She left with confidence, relationships, and a clearer sense of where she belongs: behind the camera.

Nancy’s experience demonstrates the power of and work-based learning — and what can happen when festivals, theaters, museums, and other cultural institutions become places where young people can explore careers, build networks, and see creative futures as both possible and attainable.

In part one of our new series, we explore Newport Festivals Foundation’s internship program and the growing movement to create meaningful pathways for young people into the creative industries.

🔗 Read “What Are You Teaching Me Today?”:
https://www.aspencommunitysolutions.org/2026/10/06/what-are-you-teaching-me-today/

Part one of a series highlighting Newport Festivals Foundation's internship program and broader Creative Youth Development work

08/25/2026

▶️ Press Release: The Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions Surpasses $50 Million Grantmaking Milestone in Communities Nationwide with $2 Million in New Investments

This month, the Aspen Forum For Community Solutions (AFCS) announced $2 million in new grants to community collaboratives in Boston, Houston, Denver, and Los Angeles—bringing total impact grantmaking through the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) to more than $50 million.

For more than a decade, these investments have supported a national network of 40+ urban, rural, and Tribal place-based partnerships working to strengthen the systems that shape young people’s lives—from K–12 and postsecondary education to workforce development, justice, and foster care.
This milestone represents more than dollars invested. It reflects a long-term commitment to trusting communities to lead, strengthening local collaboration, elevating young people as partners in systems change, and building pathways to education, employment, wellbeing, and economic mobility.

As we celebrate this milestone, we’re also looking ahead—continuing to invest in the local leadership, partnerships, and evidence-based approaches that help create communities where every young person has the opportunity to thrive.

Read more about the milestone and our latest investments:
https://www.aspencommunitysolutions.org/2026/08/25/50milliongrantmakingmilestone

07/15/2026

➡️ Latest Blog: America at 250: The United States Belongs to All of Us - The OYF National Network Gathering at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama

As the United States commemorates its 250th anniversary, communities across the country are reflecting on the nation’s past while imagining its future. This spring, the Forum gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to experience the fuller, more complete American story — one rooted in truth-telling, proximity, healing, repair, and a shared responsibility to intentionally build a more expansive and inclusive next chapter of our democracy in solidarity across communities and in partnership with young people.

As our nation enters its next 250 years, perhaps that is the invitation before all of us.

To remember more honestly. To lead more courageously. To remain proximate to one another. And to continue writing a story expansive enough that every young person and community across the nation can see themselves within it.
Ultimately, the stories we choose to tell about our nation shape the future we are capable of building together.

Read More:

This spring, the Opportunity Youth Forum gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to experience the fuller, more complete American story at EJI's Legacy Sites.

07/09/2026

💡 Latest Publication - Roots & Routes: A Financial Capability Toolkit for brings together lessons from five years of work with communities across the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) network, in partnership with MyPath, The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, and many local + national partners.

Financial capability is about more than budgeting or reading a paystub – although those skills matter. It is about ensuring that young people have the knowledge, confidence, relationships, and access to financial products and systems they need to navigate important financial decisions and build long-term economic wellbeing.

The toolkit examines four models for integrating into workforce and education pathways – from summer employment programs and national partnerships to locally driven collaborations and asset-building strategies – while also exploring broader factors that shape implementation, including staff wellbeing, changing income pathways, digital financial learning, and emerging technologies.

Learn More:

By Mike Swigert

05/15/2026

🗓️ The Forum (OYF) Spring 2026 Network Gathering

This week, our national network gathered in community for a uniquely memorable experience at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. As part of this deeply transformative truth-telling journey, our network also had the honor and privilege to engage in conversation with Mr. Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Through guided museum visits, facilitated dialogue, artistic and cultural expression, and intentional space for personal and collective reflection, breathing, and healing, together we experienced:

- Historical grounding that connected structural racism to present-day systems through storytelling

- Shared community and reflection that honored grief, resilience, resistance, love, and hope

- Healing-centered community rooted in belonging, trust, relational solidarity and mutual care

- Strategic imagination and courage to bear witness, dismantle inequities, and transform systems to expand opportunity

Together, our network visited the Legacy Sites to encounter our shared history and reflect on how the past continues to shape our present—including the future of our democracy, our communities, and our young people. This gathering was not simply a convening but a journey rooted in a shared intergenerational experience of collective healing, history, and transformation.

In the words for Mr. Stevenson, “Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”

05/15/2026

🎬 Tune In: Latest Podcast, "How Healing Systems Happens" feat. Monique Miles, Vice President The Aspen Institute; Managing Director Aspen Forum For Community Solutions (AFCS)

Join Monique Miles in conversation with the Collective Change Lab to explore what healing asks of us in times of rupture, grief, and uncertainty. Drawing from her personal healing journey, ancestral wisdom, spirituality, and years of systems change leadership, Monique reflects on how transformation becomes possible when we stay connected to our humanity, our communities, and our deeper sense of purpose.

The conversation moves beyond technical approaches to systems change and into the territory of meaning-making, belonging, collective healing, and what Monique describes as “transmutation”, the ability to transform pain into connection, wisdom, and future possibility. Through stories of grief, lineage, racial healing, and youth-centered systems transformation, this episode offers a profound invitation to rethink what healing systems truly requires.
This is a conversation about restoring love, life, and possibility to the systems we inhabit and about the inner and collective work needed to imagine futures rooted in dignity and belonging.

Listen to the Full Podcast:
https://soundcloud.com/collective-change-lab/ep-4-how-healing-systems

05/07/2026

🗓️ The Forum (OYF) Spring 2026 Network Gathering

This Spring, we will gather in community at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama—a place where the past is not distant, but present; where the ground itself carries memory; and where the story of the United States is etched in truth-telling that refuses silence.

This gathering is part of our program’s 2026 learning arc — a year of healing-centered unconvenings. We begin at the Legacy Sites with collective witnessing and reflection on the histories of colonization and slavery and their ongoing impact. Later in the year, we will continue this arc in Hawai‘i, where we will explore healing, interconnection, and systems rooted in place and culture. This gathering is not simply a convening. It is a journey rooted in a shared intergenerational experience of collective healing and transformation.

Gathering in Montgomery is therefore not only symbolic but necessary—as this moment asks something more of us, collectively. We are honored to invite a diverse community of OYF network members to gather in Montgomery from May 12–15, 2026. Together, our network will visit these sites to encounter our shared history and reflect on how the past continues to shape our present—including the future of our democracy, our communities, and our young people.

Learn More:

From Legacy to Liberation: Truth, Transformation, and a Collective Future This Spring, the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) will gather in community at the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama—a place where the past is not distant, but present; where the ground itself carries memory; and where the sto...

04/07/2026

🎬 Podcast Series: Before They Could Dream - An Exploration of Youth Justice and Incarceration in the United States

We are excited to share the final episode of “Before They Could Dream,” a joint project between the The Aspen Institute Aspen Forum For Community Solutions (AFCS), the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY), and Green Buzz Agency.

Over the last five weeks, this seven-episode series has discussed the history, lived experiences, and lasting impact of youth incarceration in the United States from the perspective of six members of the CFSY’s Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN), all of whom were given extreme carceral sentences as children. The episodes explored each person's early childhood, the choices they made often under dire circumstances, and the lasting impacts that have followed them into adulthood. In the final episode of “Before They Could Dream,” the podcast’s primary participants, including host Abd’Allah Lateef, engage in a wide-ranging conversation about their post-incarceration lives, careers, and thoughts on criminal justice policy. This roundtable discussion can be accessed on audio via your preferred streaming platform, and additionally on video via YouTube.

 shines a light on a system most Americans rarely see and the realities young people face when the law decides their futures before they can dream.

All episodes are now live; subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts: BeforeTheyCouldDream.Org

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hfMopczQTe4

In the finale of Before They Could Dream, host Abd’Allah welcomes Donnell, Catherine, Eddie, April and James all back for an in-person roundtable discussion....