Ready by 21 National Partnership Sponsored National Youth Development Conference

On November 5-7, 2009, nearly 1,000 youth and community development advocates gathered at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the 13th Annual Search Institute® Healthy Communities Healthy Youth® (HCHY) Conference. The Ready by 21® National Partnership, of which the Search Institute is a member, was proud to be a Signature Sponsor and content contributor for this conference. Conference attendees included educators, leaders of youth-serving organizations, and over 250 youth that many of the National Partners have worked with through Ready by 21 or other programs. The Ready by 21 National Partnership is an unprecedented coalition of prominent national organizations representing government, education, nonprofit, business, research and philanthropy.

This conference was the first time that Ready by 21 was presented on a national level, and conference participants’ responses were extremely positive.  Ready by 21-led learning sessions and workshops were well attended (in some cases, standing room only).  Participants asked many insightful questions.  The annual Search Institute Conference served as an opportunity for the Ready by 21 National Partnership to connect with their organizational members, stakeholders, leaders from potential Ready by 21 locations and prospective funders. New connections were forged and existing relationships were strengthened among Partners, conference participants, youth-serving organizations, educators and others in the field. A reception hosted by the National Partnership kicked off events at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4, the evening before the official opening of the conference.

Ready by 21’s founding and managing partner, the Forum for Youth Investment, and the Search Institute have always had tremendous potential for synergy. The Forum and Search complement each other by bringing together Search’s grassroots approach of HCHY and the leadership-focused Ready by 21 Approach developed by the Forum. The Ready by 21 Partners and Search Institute demonstrated their strong connection through a range of conference activities, including over 100 learning sessions, youth activities and a variety of exhibits and keynote presentations led and facilitated by experts in positive youth development. As a content contributor to the annual conference, the National Partnership developed and led six conference sessions. (For those of you who were unable to attend, these sessions will be offered as webinars in the coming months; for the schedule of upcoming webinars, please see the Search postcard at the bottom of this page.) Brief session descriptions are below (click the session title to see the PowerPoint that was presented).

• Thinking Outside the Box: An Overview of the Ready by 21 Approach
  This session provided an overview of the Ready by 21 Approach to thinking differently — the critical ingredient behind building broader partnerships, setting bigger goals, using better data and implementing bolder strategies. It featured Search staff and school administrators discussing the relevance of Ready by 21 for HCHY Coalitions and educators as it relates to the strong education community contingent at the conference.

• Breakthroughs to Thriving: Top Down + Bottom Up = Comprehensive Community Change
  Karen Pittman (Forum for Youth Investment) and Gene Roehlkepartain (Search Institute) demonstrated how the new collaboration between the Search Institute and the Forum for Youth Investment can unleash the synergy between the two organizations’ approaches to generate increased efficiency and effectiveness for leaders.  Participants were the first to critique the tools that both organizations hope will help communities link their grassroots mobilization with broader systems change efforts, and encourage all community leaders to get involved.

• The Ready by 21 Tool Kit: Tools for Building Better Partnerships and Designing Bolder Strategies
  This workshop demonstrated the core Ready by 21 tools and provided crosswalks between them. These tools can be used in conjunction with Results-Based Accountability planning and Search Institute’s Assets-Getting to Outcomes planning process.

• Data-Driven Program Improvement: Management Skills and Measurement Tools for Improving Youth Program Quality
  This session taught community leaders, program managers, youth workers and youth about a new research-grounded definition of “point of service quality.”  The session also provided an opportunity for a discussion of the evidence for program quality as evidence-based intervention as well as for learning how the Weikart Center and Search tools can be used to support the improvement of program quality while promoting quality across program settings.  Individual case studies on the use of the Search Institute’s and the Weikart Center’s quality assessment and program improvement tools were also shared.

• Bringing Precision to Your Passion: Tools to Help Answer Questions That Need to be Asked
  This session taught leaders to ask more complex questions about who and where children are; how well they are doing; what they are participating in; how these critical supports are being viewed and supported; and how to join forces to get the answers.  Many communities have data, but few have the all the right data, linked in the right ways and reported at the right times in ways that support decision-making. Ready by 21 Technical Partners joined three mini-discussions on data for measuring youth outcomes, program and community supports, resources, and public and political will.

• Building Effective Business Partnerships
  This workshop demonstrated the best methods for engaging the business community in supporting youth development, and highlighted research that resonates with business leaders and the range of ways businesses can be, and want to be, involved.

The conference exhibit area showcased the power and resources of the National Partnership at a joint Partner exhibit booth, in which a range of demonstrations took place. Several Partners also set up individual booths alongside the National Partnership booth. Traffic at the National Partnership booth was heavy, as attendees took advantage of the chance to speak with Partners about the Ready by 21 Approach, Tools and Services and to determine the level of "readiness" of their state or local community.