Davids Announces $1 Million Grant for Pilot Program to Help Kansas City Youth Access Extracurricular Opportunities
Today, Representative Sharice Davids announced the National Science Foundation awarded $1 million to the University of Kansas Center for Research (KU) through the Civic Innovation Challenge, a national research competition. The winning project, led by KU and local civic partners like Kansas City Public Library, KC Digital Drive, ThrYve, Keystone Community Corporation, and KC Social Innovations Center, aims to help youth in the Kansas City Metro access out-of-school learning opportunities.
The Civic Innovation Challenge is a multi-agency, federal government research and action competition. It funds research-based projects that address community priorities and have the potential for long-term impact—such as KU's project, which will build and test a mobile app that helps KC Metro youth broaden their horizons and find transportation to out-of-school educational and employment opportunities.
"I'm excited to see this collaboration between the University of Kansas Center for Research and partners in the Kansas City Metro to improve out-of-school opportunities for students in our area," said Davids. "Often, transportation can be a barrier to access that has ripple effects for students across their personal and academic lives - and, ultimately, their careers. I'm looking forward to the innovative research from this pilot project and how it will help our students achieve their full potential."
"This pilot project seeks to increase participation of out-of-school time opportunities and address underrepresented youth employment inequalities by developing tools that help youth discover and access workforce preparation opportunities. This project aims to maximize accessibility and promote transportation equity by addressing significant deficiencies in the existing transportation planning toolset," said Professor Alexandra Kondyli, Associate Professor of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering at the University of Kansas. "Our project is building on existing community-led efforts in the KC metro area led by KC Public Library, KCATA, and Wyandotte County and will work with mobility providers on both sides of the metro state line to develop and assess mobility solutions for the youth."
"Receiving this award acknowledges the importance of the work the library has been doing for the past 3 years to close the opportunity gap for youth in our community. Connecting our research with the parallel research and expertise of the others in this coalition will allow us all to amplify the potential outcomes for our region," said Andrea Ellis, Director of Strategic Learning at Kansas City Public Library.
Background:
The Civic Innovation Challenge is a collaboration between the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office (DOE), and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Challenge supports partnerships between communities and universities that address mobility and resilience priorities.
Teams comprising civic partners such as local, state and tribal officials, non-profits, and community leaders submitted proposals, which were reviewed by civic leaders and researchers in NSF-led review panels. NSF, DOE, and DHS jointly selected 52 teams to receive Stage 1 planning grants. From this cohort, 17 teams were selected for Stage 2 and received full awards of up to $1 million to implement their pilot projects with the potential to produce scalable, sustainable, and transferable solutions to address community-identified challenges in a 12-month timeframe. KU's project is one of the 17 to be selected for Stage 2.
For the Connecting Underrepresented Youths with Employment Opportunities project, community stakeholders and KU researchers will develop and implement an integrated mobile application and tools that help youth discover, access, and participate in out-of-school-time opportunities, create shared-mobility identities, and cultivate environmental-friendly travel behaviors. These out of school opportunities support youth in developing workforce readiness and cultivating occupational identities; however, underrepresented youth face inequitable access to these opportunities. The Stage 2 activities funded by this grant will help Kansas City's youth access more opportunities and broaden their educational and workforce horizons. Youths will also explore shared-mobility identities using shared bikes, transit, and micro-transit services.