Ready News: May 12, 2022
May 12, 2022
New Discussion Guide to Help State Leaders Coordinate Youth and Family Services
Across the United States, state leaders have made admirable commitments to improving the lives of children, addressing a wide range of needs— from education and mentorship to healthcare and nutrition, access to recreation and technology, and more. However, the increasing specialization of government services has led to silos and disconnected services that can be inefficient or ineffective.
Children’s cabinets are formal structures for convening public officials with shared responsibility for supporting children’s wellbeing; they can highlight inequities across different communities, creating awareness and accountability to solve problems that might otherwise go unaddressed. By improving coordination, collaboration, and coherence across agencies, children’s cabinets can deliver more effective services and supports to children and families.
Strong and Sustainable Children’s Cabinets, a new discussion guide developed in partnership between Aspen Institute’s Education & Society Program and the Forum for Youth Investment, is intended to help state government leaders identify the most appropriate actions for children’s cabinets for their context.
Social and Emotional Learning Tools for Equity
National Urban League Webinar
May 19, 3:00-4:00 PM ET
Join the National Urban League for an interactive session exploring their journey of co-creating Social and Emotional Learning tools for equity. Created in collaboration with over 100 people, these tools build on rich histories and historical practices of community building and speak to the unique expertise and histories of communities, students, and families that are too often left outside of education innovation. The result is a dynamic suite of tools that advance learning for racial equity, justice, and empowerment.
National Youth Survey
Every Hour Counts recently launched a Youth Voice initiative in collaboration with Youthprise in Minnesota. Six communities around the country (Palm Beach County, Chicago, Nashville, Providence, Flint, and Kalamazoo) are convening teams of youth leaders to design afterschool and summer initiatives and will share their ideas next fall.
As part of this effort, a youth survey has been launched to gather input from around the country to inform the future direction of afterschool.
The aim of the survey is to better understand:
- What young people find meaningful about their current experiences in their afterschool programs
- What is missing that youth would find meaningful in afterschool programs
- How afterschool programs can be more meaningful in young people’s lives
Share the survey with your networks.
Youth Voice & Agency 2022
Youth-Nex Annual Conference
October 25-26, 2022
Youth-Nex, The UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development, is a trans-disciplinary center that aims to expand and apply the science of positive youth development to address fundamental challenges facing societies around the world. This October, Youth-Nex will offer its 8th annual free conference for youth, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers across the country to discuss youth voice and agency.