Across the country, educators at all levels, business people, workers, parents, and others are creating ways to connect schools and other youth-serving institutions to the broader community and to the local economy in particular. In communities large and small, adults have explored diverse ways to organize and sustain complex community connections in order to improve young people's opportunities to succeed in postsecondary education and careers.

The rationale for strengthening the links of youth-serving institutions to workplaces and other community partners is clear, as is the importance of organizations and systems committed to making those connections meaningful and sustainable.

To address these issues, intermediaries from across the country formed the Intermediary Network (INet), a national association of leading education and workforce development organizations working in local communities to ensure student success. The purpose of INet is to help people engaging in these efforts learn from one another, sharpen their planning, and improve their implementation.

Network members, convened and supported in a peer learning community by New Ways, connect schools, communities, and employers to improve education and build a future workforce. In 2002, participants in the federally funded School-to-Work Intermediary Project found their connections to be so valuable that they decided to create a self-funded network to sustain their work together beyond the funded activities of the project. They selected New Ways as the facilitating partner of the resulting Intermediary Network.

For more information, please visit the Intermediary Network webpage at www.intermediarynetwork.org.