Smart Futures serves Pennsylvania by providing innovative career education resources to its education and training community. The result will be relevant education programs that are better aligned with the requirements of Pennsylvania's increasingly complex and demanding 21st century workplace.
Smart Futures’ approach is to:
- Recognize career readiness needs within the Commonwealth
- Identify “best practice” tools and approaches from across the nation
- Integrate the tools into innovative program packages that can be delivered statewide in conjunction with workforce boards and intermediate units
- Provide the technical assistance and training needed to implement programs effectively in the communities served
Smart Futures is dedicated to helping Pennsylvania become known for the quality of its workforce.
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Smart Futures’ programs help schools, employers, and community organizations connect with each other to provide meaningful career education activities to youth and young adults. Current Smart Futures programs include: Keys2Work, E-mentoring, and My Career Journey. All Smart Futures programs can be customized to the specific needs of any organization or institution including secondary schools (particularly Project 720 schools), post-secondary education institutions, Youth Councils, community based organizations, faith-based organization’s, Career and Technical Education high schools, adult education providers, and literacy providers.
At the program level, these tools provide teachers and instructors a powerful resource to help youth and adults acquire foundation skills, identify career interests, and develop at a basic level the capacity for lifelong learning. The Smart Futures toolkit is designed to support all career education activities. But the benefits go beyond the program level. Providing an integrated toolkit to all stakeholders involved in career education is also a means to build a uniform, statewide platform for providing effective and measurable career education program. The Smart Futures toolkit can also assist local Workforce Boards and Intermediate Units working in coordination with Regional Career Education Partnerships by:
- Promoting career preparation for all students.
- Providing mechanisms for local WIB’s and Youth Councils to partner with local high schools and CTE programs.
- Enabling local WIBs to enact their “strategies to encourage employers to support Pennsylvania’s vision for high school reform.”
- Offering CTE programs, high schools and middle schools an online program of career-focused skill improvement and enrichment aligned with the state’s reading and mathematics standards.
- Facilitating recruitment of employer and post-secondary champions.
- Embedding key regional industry clusters and occupations within each school and youth program’s career readiness tools and initiatives.
