Our approach
What we know
After decades of leading and learning in classrooms, communities, and systems and nearly a decade of work through ThirdWay Solutions, our work is built upon three key findings:
When young people become justice involved, their life and economic outcomes are negatively impacted.
Education and career pathways are the most vital for this population, yet a scarcity of real pathways that create tangible economic mobility exist.
The issues faced by justice involved youth are compounded across multiple systems which necessitates cross-agency action.
What we Do
A
Avoid Criminalization
Too often, behavior, conflict, trauma, and unmet needs become unnecessary pathways into the justice system. Schools, police, courts, and communities must respond earlier, more effectively, and more collaboratively so young people are supported before mistakes and struggles become citations, arrests, and exclusions that often inevitably lead to lifelong systems involvement.
B
Build and Scale Real Pathways
Young people furthest from opportunity need more than remediation or containment—they need game-changing and high-quality schools, pathways, and supports that reconnect them to learning, employment, and long-term opportunity.
C
Catalyze Cross-Agency Action
Young people facing the longest odds are often served by multiple systems and owned by none. Education, justice, housing, health, workforce, and child welfare systems must align around a shared goal: helping young people stay connected to school, work, community, and opportunity.
How we do it: moving from theory to action
Opportunity Youth Planning: Map at-risk populations, identify gaps to seed new and scale existing high-quality educational services
Next Generation of Alternative Schools and Workforce Pathways: Create, launch, and scale integrated models that blend academic acceleration, skill-building, work readiness, and wraparound support..
Discipline and Juvenile Policing Reform: Advance approaches that keep young people connected to learning, reduce unnecessary systems involvement, and replace punitive responses with prevention and support.
Juvenile Justice Collaboratives: Charter multi-agency action teams with c-suites of adjacent systems (police, courts, schools) aligned on shared strategies to reduce system involvement.
Data, Policy, and Accountability: Change the rules, incentives, metrics, and accountability systems so agencies share responsibility for outcomes—and are rewarded for helping the young people facing the longest odds thrive rather than hiding problems or passing the buck.
The 20% Project acts as a catalyst for existing place-based work.
We support implementation by working hand-in-hand with local leaders to redesign how systems operate, with the target population as the organizing principle.
We work with them to connect efforts across often siloed sectors to create a collective impact greater than the sum of its parts. We align people, policy, and practice around a shared population, shared outcomes, and shared accountability.