ncIMPACT Initiative #2026/01

North Carolina is piloting innovative ways to engage Opportunity Youth—young adults between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who are not in school or employed. Designed to help Opportunity Youth build essential skills, the “7 Steps to Get Hired: The Key to Building Your Future” course is a free, interactive, self-paced resource covering topics from résumé building to on-the-job communication. To design the course, Carolina Across 100 brought together a team of community leaders, educators, workforce professionals, and young adults.

Emphasizing a thoughtful, data-driven approach to engaging Opportunity Youth was paramount to its success. Carolina Across 100 partnered with Hive Digital to test a multiplatform advertising strategy combining Google and Meta campaigns with hyper-targeted audience segmentation and tailored messaging. This campaign reached one million people online, prompted hundreds of information requests, and led more than three hundred young adults to enroll in the course. 

This bulletin demonstrates how strategic digital marketing can connect Opportunity Youth with the resources they need to build a brighter future.