Corporate leaders gathered at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in Northwest Washington last week for an annual conference on mentoring.

On Tuesday morning, the city and the United Way of the Piedmont, along with other agencies such as the Boys and Girls Club of the Upstate and Big Brothers Big Sisters, launched Get Connected, an online tool designed to match volunteers with organizations and schools that need people willing to mentor, tutor and volunteer.

Thanks to a first-of-its-kind tool from the bipartisan Opportunity Nation initiative, we get a slightly updated and more informed view of opportunity for young people in Pennsylvania. The Youth Opportunity Index, released earlier this month, ranked Pennsylvania 20th nationally based on three dimensions of opportunity -- Jobs and the Economy, Education, and Community Health and Civic Life.

In a time of fiscal restraint, an unemployment crisis among our young people, and a skills gap that hurts our businesses and hampers our recovery, it is vital that public investments in human capital development be targeted to meet labor market demand. By prioritizing outcomes, engaging employers, and reducing bureaucratic barriers, the administration can substantially boost the workforce development system's impact without spending a single additional cent.

Low-income strivers face uphill climbs, especially at Ball High School, where a third of the girls’ class failed to graduate on schedule. But by the time the triplets donned mortarboards in the class of 2008, their story seemed to validate the promise of education as the great equalizer.

I'm excited to share with you that Opportunity Nation has been awarded a grant by Staples Foundation, the private charitable arm of Staples, Inc., to help advance education and job skills in America.

Employers across America will tell you similar stories. We’re in the midst of a perfect storm: a Great Recession that has caused a sharp increase in unemployment and a Great Inflection — a merger of the information technology revolution and globalization that is simultaneously wiping out many decent-wage, middle-skilled jobs, which were the foundation of our middle class, and replacing them with decent-wage, high-skilled jobs.