The Wyoming Department of Education (WDE), along with the Wyoming Workforce Development Council, will sponsor a Wyoming Road Trip project through Roadtrip Nation that will help empower Wyoming residents to identify their interests and explore pathways aligned with their unique aspirations and skills. The project will be funded through a Daniels Fund grant.
“Daniels Fund is a committed partner to Wyoming’s next generation,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow. “Their generous funding will enable us to share inspiring stories about planning for the future with students across the state.”
For 15 years, Roadtrip Nation (RTN) has made it their mission to talk with professionals of every kind and ask the questions that no one is asking – honest questions about their struggles, successes, and how they figured out the age-old dilemma, “What should I do with my life?”
RTN does this through a multi-platform content strategy, including its long-running documentary series on public television that reaches up to 60 million households annually. This content is then post-produced for educational purposes via RTN’s Interview Archive, encompassing over 5,500 real-world career pathway stories distributed to 14 million students, a project-based curriculum, and a New York Times bestselling book.
To gather content for these outlets, every year RTN selects various industries and/or socially relevant issues – such as Cybersecurity, Veterans, Opportunity Youth – as primary themes for its Roadtrips. On these trips, selected young people hit the road to interview Leaders across America who relate with those same students’ social backgrounds and personal interests, empowering them to define their own roads in life. Simultaneously, people currently engaged in various career pathways can share their own career stories on Roadtrip Nation’s online storytelling platform – Share Your Road – providing a crowd-sourced opportunity for professionals to share their own “Roads” and significantly scaling the number of career pathways represented in RTN’s Interview Archive.
All Roadtrip and Share Your Road content is included in RTN’s rapidly growing Interview Archive which fuels educational resources that reach 14 million middle school, high school, and college students through the College Board, Hobsons-Naviance, and other RTN distribution partners. Approximately 175,000 students have participated in RTN’s project-based learning curriculum, resulting in a proven increase in self-efficacy rates and academic performance.
The Wyoming Roadtrip is scheduled to roll in April of 2021. In anticipation of the Wyoming Roadtrip, an application and selection process for the Roadtrippers will begin this fall.
The Daniels Fund, established by cable television pioneer Bill Daniels, is a private charitable foundation dedicated to making life better for the people of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through its grants program, scholarship program, and ethics initiative. Visit DanielsFund.org to learn more.