Last week the White House announced "Summer Jobs+," the plan for businesses, non-profits, and government to work together to provide employment for low-income and disconnected youth in the summer of 2012.

The President proposed $1.5 billion for high-impact summer jobs and year-round employment for low-income youth, ages 16-24 in the American Jobs Act. When Congress failed to act, the Federal government and private sector came together to commit to creating nearly 180,000 employment opportunities for low-income youth in the summer of 2012, with a goal of reaching 250,000 opportunities by the start of summer, at least 100,000 of which will be placements in paid jobs and internships. This announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and provide jobs.

The administration also announced its intention to launch, within 60 days, the "Summer Jobs+ Bank," a one-stop search tool for youth to access job postings from any participating employers. The search tool builds upon an open standard, the JobPosting schema endorsed by schema.org in November, 2011 in support of the Veterans Jobs Bank, and will include technical and promotional support by Google, Internships.com, AfterCollege, LinkedIn and Facebook.

In 2009 and 2010, communities nationally used Recovery Act funds to directly support summer work opportunities for over 367,000 young people. In the summer of 2011, the Department of Labor brought together private sector commitments to employ over 80,000 youth.

Businesses, non-profits and government can accept the President's call-to-action by directly hiring youth as well as providing corporate mentorship experiences, internship, and other opportunities that connect young people to jobs. The three key ways organizations can engage are:

Learn and Earn: Provide summer youth jobs in the form of paid internships and/or permanent positions that provide on-the-job training. Of the roughly 180,000 job commitments announced more than 70,000 are Learn and Earn commitments.

Life Skills: Provide youth work-related soft skills, such as communication, time management and teamwork, through coursework and/or experience.  This includes resume writing or interview workshops and mentorship programs.

Work Skills: Provide youth insight into the world of work to prepare for employment.  This includes job shadow days and internships.

American youth are struggling to get the work experience they need for jobs of the future. According to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Population Survey): 48.8 percent of youth between ages 16-24 were employed in July, the month when youth employment usually peaks. This is significantly lower than the 59.2 percent who were employed five years ago and 63.3 percent of youth employed 10 years ago.

Minority youth had an especially difficult time finding employment this past summer when only 34.6 percent of African American and 42.9 percent of Hispanic youth had a job.