"I know who I am, I know where I'm going and I know who can help me get there." That is the goal driving UNITE-LA’s latest effort to ensure more young people in Los Angeles County graduate high school with real momentum toward college, career and economic mobility. Through the California Purposeful Pathways Project, funded by the Gates Foundation, UNITE-LA and the California Community Foundation will support demonstration models in the Long Beach and South Bay subregions of the L.A. Region K–16 Collaborative—showing how high schools and community colleges can better integrate advising, dual enrollment and career-connected learning into coherent, equitable pathways for students.

Grounded in the Commission on Purposeful Pathways, this work brings together K–12 and higher education partners to design and strengthen systems that build students' sense of belonging, purpose and social capital. In Los Angeles County, UNITE-LA will work closely with Centinela Valley Union High School District and El Camino College, as well as Long Beach Unified School District and Long Beach City College, to improve transitions from high school into college and career.

Over the next three years, participating partners will work together to better align advising, accelerated coursework and career-connected learning so that students experience clearer and more connected pathways. The project will also support stronger cross-system collaboration, improved use of data and shared learning about what it takes to create high-quality, student-centered pathways that can be sustained and scaled. Learn more about this work in the Gates Foundation's blog, "What a Model Airplane in a California High School Reveals about Building Stronger Education Pathways for Students."

In March, UNITE-LA joined fellow grantees in launching the work through early statewide learning activities, including the Accelerate Ed convening in Columbus, OH, and a Community of Practice meeting in San Diego, CA, that brought together partners from four California sites. These gatherings helped build alignment across regions, strengthen relationships among grantees and reinforce UNITE-LA's role in helping bring this vision to life in Los Angeles County while contributing to broader learning across the state.

For more information, please reach out to Adam Gottlieb, Director of Postsecondary Strategy & Policy, at [email protected].