Public/Private Ventures (P/PV)

Legacy collection

Innovation. Research. Action.

After almost 35 years Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) has ceased operations. The organization leaves behind an incredible legacy of knowledge, including hundreds of research reports, case studies and evaluations about how best to improve programs and outcomes for children, youth and families. We are fortunate that P/PV has decided to archive its publications collection with the Foundation Center's IssueLab so that practitioners can benefit from this knowledge for years to come.

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Seeking A Sustainable Journey to Work: Findings from the National Bridges to Work Demonstration

July 11, 2005

The Bridges to Work demonstration was designed to test whether efforts to help inner-city job seekers overcome barriers to accessing suburban jobs would result in better employment opportunities and earnings for these workers. This report examines outcomes for more than 1,800 applicants to Bridges to Work, half of whom were randomly selected to receive the programs transportation, job placement and supportive services for up to 18 months and half who were not offered these services. The researchers found that Bridges to Work did not positively impact participants employment and earnings, results that were consistent across cities and across various strategies for providing transportation services. Given the programs implementation challenges, costs and lack of results, the report concludes that the Bridges model is not a viable policy response to the mismatch between the location of jobs and the location of unemployed workers. However, the models lack of success does not diminish the importance of improving transportation options to increase workers access to employment, and the authors derive a number of important lessons from the demonstrations experience to inform future mobility efforts.

Community Change for Youth Development: Ten Lessons from the CCYD Initiative

December 1, 2002

From 1995 through 2002, P/PV worked with six neighborhoods around the country to develop and institute a framework of "core concepts" to guide youth programming for the nonschool hours. The goal was to create programming that would involve a high proportion of each neighborhood's several thousand adolescents. This report summarizes the basic lessons that emerged from this Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD) initiative. The lessons address such topics as the usefulness of a "core concepts" approach; the dos and don'ts of involving neighborhood residents in change initiatives; the role of research; the role of youth; and the capacity of neighborhood-wide approaches to attract high-risk youth.

In the Driver's Seat

April 30, 2001

In the mid-1990s, P/PV launched the Bridges to Work demonstration to test the idea that improved access to suburban jobs might benefit low-income urban residents. The project sought to measure the impact of reverse-commuting initiatives in five major cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and St. Louis. While the project was carefully planned, program staff still faced numerous unforeseen events that required program directors to adapt the design to meet local needs, impediments, and opportunities, while maintaining the quality of the original design. In the Drivers Seat examines the experiences of five project directors and their ability to address the challenges that arose, including discrimination in the workplace, ethical issues with random assignment, and difficulties in recruitment and placement.

Youth Development: Issues, Challenges and Directions

September 2, 2000

During the past decade there has been considerable concern and discussion about what Americans can do to improve the lives and life prospects of our youth. The changing economy, the stress on family and community life that changing economy brings, concern about the adequacy of public education, the highly publicized incidents of gun violence in schools and the very large cohort of teenagers that this decade brings have only heightened the legitimacy, and the rhetoric, of that concern. In this volume of nine essays, leading researchers and practitioners in the field of youth development share what they have learned over the past decade about the potential challenges of the "youth development approach" and offer some suggestions about how to proceed in the coming decade.

Overcoming Roadblocks on the Way to Work: Bridges to Work Field Report

June 12, 1999

While many low-income, inner-city job seekers are isolated from economic opportunities in the suburbs, transportation alone is unlikely to improve their employment prospects, according to the authors of this report. Based on the lessons of P/PV's $17 million five-city Bridges to Work demonstration, the report indicates that while transportation was certainly critical, much of the sites' success depended more on their ability to recruit, prepare and support job seekers, the essential components of any workforce development program.

Support for Youth: A Profile of Three Communities (a Community Change for Youth Development [CCYD] report)

March 15, 1998

Over the past decade, increasing attention has been given to nonschool hours as a vehicle for providing some of the basic supports -- caring adult attention and guidance, career development, and opportunities to engage in positive learning and enrichment activities -- that encourage positive youth development. This report examines the assumptions that youth with higher levels of support are more successful in school, work and their communities, and that youth in moderately poor urban communities lack adequate supports. Community-wide surveys completed in 1996 in three communities -- Austin, Savannah, and St. Petersburg (Florida) -- found a discouraging decline in supports and opportunities as youth get older. From 15 to 25 percent of youth 18 years and older were not engaged in any positive structured activities, had very few adults in their lives, and were not working.

Getting from Here to There: The Bridges to Work Demonstration First Report to the Field

March 2, 1997

In response to the increase in inner-city joblessness and the growing suburbanization of employment in the early 1990s, P/PV's developed the Bridges to Work initiative. Bridges provided transportation to allow inner-city residents to reach suburban jobs while also offering limited support services aimed at mitigating problems created or exacerbated by the longer daily commutes. This report examines the challenges and achievements pilot sites experienced in trying to build partnerships between cities and suburbs agencies during the planning and implementation phases.

Mentoring: A Synthesis of P/PV's Research: 1988-1995

September 19, 1996

This is an essential handbook for anyone interested in mentoring. It presents the evidence and conclusions that P/PV compiled from over a decade of research on mentoring programs in five crucial areas:Can participating in mentoring programs make important and observable changes in the attitudes and behaviors of at-risk youth?Are there specific practices that characterize effective mentoring relationships?What program structures and supports are needed to maximize "best practices" among mentors?Can mentoring be integrated into large-scale youth-serving institutions?Are there large numbers of adults with enough flexible time and emotional resources to take on the demands of mentoring at-risk youngsters?The report also includes as an appendix the executive summaries of eleven P/PV reports on mentoring.

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