BEST stands for Building Exemplary Systems for Training Youth Workers. Cities in the BEST network offer youth development training and other professional development opportunities to better equip youth program staff to serve young people from a developmental approach. Participants in the youth development trainings come from all types of youth-serving settings including school-based afterschool programs, residential juvenile justice facilities, parks & recreation centers, faith-based programs, independent out-of-school time programs, and many others.

The National Building Exemplary Systems for Training Youth Workers (BEST) Initiative was created to pilot a delivery strategy for the AYD curriculum.  This initiative provides technical assistance, training and networking to community-based systems, i.e., BEST sites, as they work to strengthen their capacity to train youth workers in the concepts of youth development.

The three main goals of the National BEST Initiative are to: 

·         Strengthen and develop local infrastructures for delivering youth worker training grounded in youth development principles;

·         Develop and support a national network of local community-based youth worker training efforts so that they share resources, identify strategies, and build capacities of youth workers; and

·         Identify local communities with a demonstrated interest in developing a system to train youth workers not yet part of this initiative and to support them as they develop plans to build infrastructures to train youth workers. 

The National BEST Initiative has received support from the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds, The Ford Foundation, and The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The national BEST Apprenticeship Program is the youth development practitioner apprenticeship (YDPA) program implemented by local BEST intermediary organizations in partnership with the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work (NTI).

BEST Apprenticeship Programs:

·         Provide apprentice youth workers with 3,800 hours of supervised on-the-job training based on youth development principles.

·         Require approximately 350 hours of related coursework at higher education institutions.

·         Provide apprentices with a Department of Labor certificate, signaling their readiness and qualifications to work directly with young people in youth programs (upon completion of the two-year program).

BEST Apprenticeship programs promote apprentices’ development of a foundational level of proficiency in core competency areas for the youth work profession. BEST Apprenticeship Programs are rigorous because they require apprentices to systematically develop attitudes, knowledge, abilities, skills, and work experience through carefully designed on-the-job training activities that are integrated into their work schedules and become more complex over time.

Journeyworkers, or skilled workers, monitor and evaluate apprentices’ progress according to objective criteria and provide ongoing coaching and supervision. BEST Apprenticeship Programs also use common resources—such as the On-the-Job Training Guide for BEST Apprentices and Leader’s Guide for BEST Journeyworkers.

BEST intermediary organizations register BEST Apprenticeship Programs with their state registration agencies, recruit participants, coordinate the delivery of on-the-job training with employers (youth-serving organizations) and related instruction with colleges, monitor program quality and impact, and provide technical assistance to local participants.