Clinton Campaign to Create Job Opportunities
At the 10th Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on Tuesday in New York City, the Ad Council in partnership with Year Up, the Employment Pathways Project, ConPRmetidos, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, New Options Project, and Opportunity Nation launched the national “Grads of Life” campaign.
It aims to help businesses fill more than 4 million vacant positions within the United States with qualified workers. The launch took place during CGI’s inaugural in-person meeting of the new Youth Employment Action Network attended by both business and non-profit leaders.
Hillary Clinton shared a message in support of the launch: “As we continue the work of Job One at The Clinton Foundation, we need to continue to build partnerships and to recruit more businesses to solve this important economic challenge. The Grads of Life PSA campaign is the first effort to drive employer demand for the millions of low-income young adults that are a huge source of untapped talent in our country and through GradsofLife.org employers can now access the first-ever online platform for the information, tools, and resources they need to take action today. I am asking employers, educators, non-profits, community leaders to join me and the Grads of Life campaign in this bold agenda to grow our economy and to create new opportunities for tomorrow’s leaders.”
The new “Grads of Life” campaign was developed to raise awareness and change employer’s perceptions of opportunity youth – the more than 6 million young people without access to employment, educational opportunities or the economic mainstream.
The effort includes a series of print, broadcast, radio, outdoor and web public service ads (PSAs), which seek to evolve social norms so that proven models of “employment pathways” – mentoring, school-to-work programs, internships, and other hiring opportunities – are widely recognized and used by competitive, best-practice employers to hire previously overlooked candidates.
The “Grads of Life” campaign will target hiring managers online through a partnership with LinkedIn, and extended through new Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube channels. Per the Ad Council’s model, the PSAs will run in space and time entirely donated by the media.
