Old North News

The University of North Carolina’s flagship campus in Chapel Hill is starting a program to help students rebound from the pandemic with new jobs. The university revealed a statewide program called Carolina Across 100 this week.

“I work on a university campus. I have seen the struggles of young people who are at Carolina,” Anita Brown-Graham, UNC School of Government professor, said to WRAL. “Think about young people who don’t have the kind of support that those who are at an institution like UNC have. And really, we’re going to try to focus on those young people.”

Brown-Graham is leading a five-year pan-university effort to partner with communities in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, WRAL said. The first two years will feature a program called Our State, Our Work: Connecting Young Adults with Their Future.

"Last year, as we began to pick our heads up and think about what a post-COVID world may look like, whenever that may be, it occurred to the chancellor that this was actually the perfect time to engage an initiative where the university pledged its resources, its assets, to support communities in every part of North Carolina,” Brown-Graham said.

The program has called on its leaders to survey people across the state to discover their challenges with respect to employment. Among those the pandemic exacerbated were health care issues, child care services, the ability to find stable housing, and food insecurity, WRAL reported.

The focus is on young adults, aged 16 to 24, who feel disconnected from employment or the ability to find meaningful work. Brown-Graham said a long-term goal is to partner with nonprofit groups and employers to make the program self-sustainable, WRAL said.