Developing powerful environments where youth can thrive requires coordination, critical backbone services, supports, and continuous quality improvement. The American Institutes for Research (AIR) and The Opportunity Project (Tulsa, OK) presented this webinar focused on integrating learning systems through quality expanded learning opportunities.

As we all navigate this pandemic, the Forum seeks to offer reflections, tools, and resources – both our own and those from other leading national organizations – to help us all keep children and youth at the center as we’re adjusting. For example, in Karen’s recent blog, “What Happens When Out-of-School Time is All the Time?”, she ponders the critical questions of how we handle learning in this new age of social distancing.

According to The Aspen Institute’s “From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope” report, school-community coordination is critical to supporting children's well-being. Building on this, new research from the National Academies of Sciences, titled "Shaping Summertime Experiences: Opportunities to Promote Healthy Development and Well-Being for Children and Youth," highlights the role of summertime – a unique opportunity to foster such cross-sector partnerships. The importance of these partnerships are more important than ever before, given the trauma, adversity, food insecurity, and other disruptions that children and families are experiencing.

As much of the country, the Forum for Youth Investment stands in anger, disgust, and grief by the recent murder of George Floyd. We are painfully aware that this is not an isolated incident, as evidenced by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor mere weeks earlier. The violence and inhumanity that led to these and the deaths of countless other Black Americans at the hands of police brutality and blatant racism are but one manifestation of the force of structural racism.