The Pathways Narrative Project was a two-year collaborative initiative, led by Wonder: Strategies for Good that convened nine organizations working in five places (Colorado, Indiana, New York, Texas, and Washington, D.C.) to improve education and career pathways for young people. 

 

Together the cohort explored how to leverage the power of narrative to advance programs and systems change in the pathways space and helped build the capacity of the organizations to advance narratives that both center the voices of young people and shift audience mindsets among employers, policymakers, community and education leaders, and other key stakeholders to ensure that all young people obtain credentials of value and gain the professional skills, agency, and relationships to thrive in the workplace.

 

The resulting artifacts from the project can help other intermediaries shape how they think about narrative in their own work, in particular through the lens of Wonder’s Heartwired framework that emphasizes the importance of developing and continually refining change hypotheses through four interconnected phases: Change, Landscape, Mindset, and Persuasion.