The Susan Crown Exchange (SCE) staff and board are not alone in our concern about the current state of our country: who is being heard, who is getting what they need, and who is being left behind. And like many others, we are seeking to define what that means to us in our investments, and how to collaboratively find solutions to these challenges..

We started by thinking about our model (the Exchange), our areas of interests (digital learning and social and emotional learning), and better defining what success means to us (ensuring youth have the skills to thrive). Without getting into the nitty-gritty of these conversations, we have come to the realization that when we say our goal is for youth to thrive, we mean that youth need the skills to thrive in life, work, and play. This realization has led us to more specifically think about digital citizenship, workforce readiness, and sports and coaching.

The why in this case matters, but that is for another time. Right now, I would love to know:

what does digital citizenship mean to you?

Webster’s Dictionary defines citizenship as “the qualities that a person is expected to have as a responsible member of a community.” The term is listed as a noun, but really, citizenship is a verb: it’s a way of responsibly living and engaging in the community in which you live. The word’s origin is Latin – civitas – because at the time, more people identified as a citizen of their city than with their country. Today, technology has broken down traditional borders and again shifted the meaning of community. Thus, a digital citizen is one who acts as a responsible member within their online community.

The challenge with digital citizenship is that because it is so new, the rules are constantly being drafted and re-drafted without understanding the risks, rewards, and responsibilities of  navigating online communities, sometimes – whether inadvertently or advertently – causing pain to others. At SCE, we believe kindness matters. We are seeking to bridge, rather than divide our communities, our workplaces, and our families, and we are looking at how to best do that.

Recently, I had a conversation with Kristen Cambell, the executive director of PACE, and I asked what digital citizenship meant to her. She replied that the answer would depend on the perspective: is it an avenue for engaging in citizenship, or a practice in and of itself? To further our discussion, Kristen shared a metaphor around how her funders and practitioners think about civic engagement (as excerpted from the original blog: The Civic Engagement Field is a House, July 28, 2017):

“If you think of the civic engagement field as a big house, it’s easy to visualize the way funders and practitioners interact with one another to create the larger whole we all represent, and how each piece interacts with and supports the others. In civic engagement some folks come in through the front door, with the kinds of activities we traditionally associate with civic engagement like voting, community organizing, volunteering, etc. Others come in through a side door or a window. These folks might focus on issues like the alleviation of poverty, environmental work, or health, and they use civic engagement as a strategy to achieve those ends. Others serve as the floor or foundation of house. These are folks who focus on issues like structural inequality or personal freedom, and see civic engagement as a mechanism for building individual social and political power and shifting systems toward a more inclusive and representative frame. Without a strong foundation, the other elements of the house are fundamentally weakened. Finally, there is the roof, or the enabling conditions of democracy, encompassing things like journalism, media, and social entrepreneurship. The roof protects the house — if there’s a leak, that negatively influences the way the rest of the elements can operate.”

I like this metaphor. It’s a simple, yet systematic way to understand the players in the civic engagement space. However, it is missing one vital thing: the people – the citizens themselves – and how they interact with one another.

Change, on any level, cannot happen without people. And while these interactions between citizens look slightly different whether online or offline, it’s the core components of citizenship – responsibly living and engaging in the community in which you live – that matters. To take the house metaphor, is (digital) citizenship the nails of the house – what keeps it all together – or is it the people living in the house – the ones who make the house a home?

We are still early in this process and are still seeking to understand what is going on in this space: if you have thoughts or ideas on this, please take one minute to fill out the survey or leave a message in the comments below.

 GirlForward

Interview with GirlForward founder, Blair Brettschneider on GirlForward, why she started the organization and what she’s thinking about.

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Background

Organization Vision: We envision a world free from barriers for girls.

Organization Mission: GirlForward is a community of support dedicated to creating and enhancing opportunity for girls who have been displaced by conflict and persecution.

Population Served: Girls ages 14-20 who have been displaced from their homes and resettled in the U.S.

Founding Year: 2011

Problem and Approach: We are in the midst of the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever seen. Over 60 million people worldwide have been forced to flee their homes. In conflict, girls are especially vulnerable to violence, isolation, and being kept out of school. Girls who receive resettlement in the United States face huge challenges: poverty, language barrier, limited or disrupted education, isolation, and trauma. But when girls succeed, everyone benefits. GirlForward’s core programs are built according to girl-centered design. Each program includes three key things girls need to succeed: friends, mentors, and a safe space.

Program Overview:

• Our Mentoring Program pairs girls with mentors to engage in “4W” activities (Wellness, Wisdom, Wallet and World) in order to explore their passions and graduate from high school.
• Camp GirlForward provides a space for girls to simultaneously build their English skills while exploring their identities and learning about the world around them.
• The Safe Spaces Project provides safe spaces for girls to explore their identities, connect with other girls, and access the resources they need.

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Interview

Why did you start this program? I recognized a gap in support for adolescent girls who had come to the U.S. through refugee resettlement and founded GirlForward to fill that gap.

What kind of trends do you see in your area of work? We don’t follow trends; we focus on what the needs of our girls are. Right now, everyone is talking about STEM. STEM is important. But so is learning the alphabet. It’s extremely difficult to learn English and succeed in high school simultaneously. We’re focusing on building tools and resources for English language learners and their teachers, because ELL students are a growing population and the resources have not caught up.

What do you think will change most about over the next 5 years? We work with a population that is constantly changing, in circumstances that are changing as well. The political climate in the past year or two has caused people to educate themselves on the refugee crisis, but there is also a lot more work to be done.

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in the population you serve? Why? English language learning, positive identity, goal-setting. English language is critical for academic and future success; we want our girls to feel positive about who they are and where they come from; goal-setting is important for high school and future success

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in your staff? Why? 

• Good communication – especially with a small team spread over two states, it’s important!
• Innovation – because we are a start-up, if we see a problem we can work on tackling it without dealing with the huge bureaucracy others sometimes have to deal with
• Balance – we are all extremely passionate about this work, so it’s easy to overwork ourselves! We emphasize the importance of balance. Exhausted employees are not helpful to themselves or others.

How has technology influenced the way your organization works? In so many ways. We use an app called Slack to communicate that has been completely transformative. On the other end of the spectrum, so many more of our girls have phones now than they did in 2011.

Who are your key mentors? I worked at Heshima Kenya prior to starting GirlForward, and the founder Anne Sweeney was a great mentor to me. I also previously interned at 826michigan and had the chance to learn a bit from the executive director, Amanda Uhle. Both of these women accomplished so much in their roles and made me feel like I could achieve my goals.

If we talk one year from now, reflecting on what a great year it’s been, what did you/the organization achieve? We have filled out our staff in both cities and have all our systems working well and efficiently. We are preparing for our launch in city #3 in 2019!

What’s next for you in your work? What are you looking forward to? We are continuing to work on resources for ELL students and teachers that will allow us to potentially serve thousands of students around the country; our goal is to launch in another city by 2019.

What do you wish others knew about the organization? The voices of our girls are critical to every aspect of our work. Their input informs everything from programming to marketing and fundraising.

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Named Best Charity by Chicago Reader

Reader’s Digest 2015 Extraordinary America

 

 

The Wallace Foundation recently launched a four-year initiative bringing together urban school districts and out-of-school-time organizations to help children in six communities gain greater opportunities for social and emotional learning (SEL) and to better understand and generate lessons on how schools and out-of-school-time providers can align and improve those opportunities.

A growing body of research has linked social and emotional learning to success in school, career and life. However, it is not yet known how school and afterschool experiences can be strengthened, aligned and delivered in real-world, urban settings to help children develop these skills. The new initiative will explore how this kind of cross-sector alignment may benefit children in participating communities and ultimately lead to knowledge that can be applied to the broader field.

Participating communities will receive a range of supports beyond financial resources, including inclusion in a professional learning community, regular convenings with other cities in the initiative, supports to integrate and apply SEL data to continuous improvement systems, communications counsel, and other technical assistance provided by national experts such as the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the Forum – including our Weikart Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality – and others.

Learn more about the Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative.

SCE is pleased to announce two new Venture Grants: Remake Learning in our Digital Learning portfolio and Wings for Kids in our Social and Emotional Learning portfolio. SCE Venture Grants target thought leaders and creative organizations on the leading edge of the field. Through our Venture Grant initiative, we build partnerships with innovative groups working to solve key challenges aligned to our strategy.

Remake Learning is a professional network of educators and innovators working together to shape the future of teaching and learning in the Greater Pittsburgh Region. Representing more than 250 organizations, including early learning centers & schools, museums & libraries, afterschool programs & community nonprofits, colleges & universities, ed-tech startups & major employers, philanthropies & civic leaders, Remake Learning is collaborative effort to inspire and empower a generation of lifelong learners in Pittsburgh, West Virginia, and beyond. To learn more about Remake’s process and outcomes, download the Remake Learning Playbook. The Playbook covers the theory and practice of building learning innovation networks, the resources and strategies required to put networks into action, and the impact of the network in schools, museums, libraries, communities, and more.

Wings for Kids aims to equip at-risk kids with the social and emotional skills to succeed in school, stay in school, and thrive in life. WINGS is the only U.S. organization focused solely on providing social and emotional education within after school programs and serves more than 1,600 kids every day at 11 locations. The organization uses a codified, research-based curriculum that requires daily data entry to track kids’ progress and ensure that providers are delivering the desired outcomes of improving social and emotional skills, behavior, attendance, and academic performance.  Click here for a free DIY SEL kit.

Guest blog: Promising practices for social and emotional learning

Written by Haviland Rummel, Executive Director of the Susan Crown Exchange (SCE). October 2016.

How do young people learn to thrive? This is the driving question behind SCE’s Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Challenge, which sheds new light on how afterschool programs can equip teens with valuable social and emotional skills. We know that skills like emotion management and problem-solving are important for life success, but less is known about the strategies and practices around how to build these skills in afterschool organizations.

The SEL Challenge brought together experts in youth programming, developmental science, program evaluation and performance measurement in a two-year learning community to explore how six SEL skill sets—emotion management, empathy, teamwork, responsibility, initiative, and problem solving—are best cultivated in teens.

The programs ranged from the fairly large, such as the Voyageur Outward Bound program in St Paul, MN, where 18 fulltime staff take young people of all ages into wilderness adventures, to the Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory, where six staff engage the city’s youth through hands-on, programming inspired by the heritage of the sea. Although the content of these programs couldn’t be more varied, each in its own way helps students develop motivation, coping skills, agency and self-awareness. The close relationships and self-confidence that result are more important than the content.

Each of these programs is helping to turn kids into well well-rounded adults with skills to navigate life. We found that all children—no matter where they live or what they’ve been through—can deepen their social and emotional growth. Most of all, these young learners taught us that these programs really change the trajectory of their lives, unveiling their abilities to endure and advance.

This work is summarized in a free field guide called Preparing Youth to Thrive: Promising Practices for Social & Emotional Learning which offers youth-serving organizations of all types strategies, case studies, resources and tools to remix and adapt the SEL practices in their own settings. The guide supports expert practitioners and novices alike in improving the intentionality and impact of social and emotional skill building and assessment. We are keenly aware that this is new territory and a first draft, but we’re clear that the programs that we studied hold profound lessons to help kids become responsible and grounded adults, ready to function in the workplace or in college, and certainly as citizens.

Later this month, the SEL Challenge Technical Report highlighting the methodology and findings of the two-year study will be released by the David P. Weikart Center. We invite you to join a Thought Leader Roundtable webinar discussion at 2 pm ET on October 20 to learn more about the findings and their implications for policy and practice.

Measuring SEL: Using Data to Inspire Practice is the new website launched by CASEL and leading researchers, educators, and policymakers from universities, school districts, and national organizations. The website is a product of the Assessment Work Group’s efforts to tackle some of the most critical issues in using data to improve SEL, especially in schools. 

Check out the blog written by experts to inform people about what is happening in the field, inspire new approaches, engage a wider range of collaborators, and connect people working in these areas with each other.

Join the Collaborator Network, an opportunity for educators and researchers to exchange ideas and build new relationships and collaborations.

This new in-depth guide to 25 evidence-based programs—aimed at elementary schools and OST providers—offers information about curricular content and programmatic features that practitioners can use to make informed choices about their SEL programs. The first of its kind, the guide allows practitioners to compare curricula and methods across top SEL programs. It also explains how programs can be adapted from schools to out-of-school-time settings, such as afterschool and summer programs.

Download the guide here.

It has been nearly a year to the day since I started as SCE’s Digital Learning Program Officer. Since then, I’ve collaboratively worked to build and launch the Digital Learning Challenge. As in life, things always comes full circle: on the anniversary of my start date, we publicly announced our incredible program partners for the Digital Learning Challenge. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1) The hardest part is starting: There is an interesting balance required of any new employee in a new organization: find a way to respect the organization’s history and learnings, while respecting your own experience and knowledge, and then figure out how to blend them together so that all parties feel heard, respected, and invested. Yet, I’ve also learned that when you land in the right organization, that balance is no longer required. In short, it’s been a great year.

On its simplest level, SCE is a learning organization and my job is to figure out how to bring together really smart people with great ideas and work together to find answers to hard questions. We believe that our grantees – or as we refer to them, partners – are the experts because day in and day out, they are the ones researching and working directly with the youth to develop the programs that best work for them. At SCE, it is our job to listen. It’s not about saying we don’t know everything, it’s about recognizing that there is always more to learn. It’s a humbling and empowering way to work.

2) The second hardest part is remembering those values: The hard work is only just beginning and the true test is remembering to let go of what I think and really, truly listen.

3)  The more questions you ask…: When we set out to build the RFP, we took learnings from the first SEL Challenge. First, we did not want to overburden the finalists with a lengthy RFP process, so we sought to ask more questions up front, believing that it would provide us more information to make a decision. We also thought we were super smart in setting word counts. Nope. Not only did we likely put a strain on already-time-strapped (and overworked!) development officers and organizations, but then we had to read all the answers. With nearly 100 applicants, over 30 questions, 2 employees, and only 10 days to get through it all, it was a lot.

Next time, how do we set up an RFP that includes specific enough questions to get us the information we need while balancing the time and effort of the organizations applying? On that note, are there any grant processes that have been your ‘favorite’ and why? Leave a comment below!

4) How can we better address the geographical divide?: As you have seen in previous posts our goal with this initiative is to identify and bring together diverse organizations to collaborate and share their practices. Here’s who didn’t apply: organizations serving rural communities. More specifically, of 90 applicants, only 2 applicants served rural-only areas. The reality is, and further evidenced by results of the recent presidential election, urban and rural populations are deeply divided.

Now there could be a lot of reasons to this: there are not many organizations using digital tools for learning in rural communities (unlikely), organizations may not have ‘seen themselves’ in the RFP language (possible), organizations serving these areas may not have the capacity to participate in a high-touch initiative (something to think about), our networks in these areas are weak (true), or maybe they just don’t want to hang with us city folk (I don’t really blame you). But for whatever the reason for the dearth of applicants, we have to do better: all initiatives are stronger with diverse voices at the table.

If you’re an organization serving rural communities, we would love to hear from you on how we can do better. Comment below please!

5) Where are the Citizen Coders?:  Broadly speaking, our cohort of applicants consisted of two types: arts and design. We classified arts as journalism, photography, music, and digital arts programs and design as video game design, sound design, general making or other industrial-type design.

This led me to ask, why does it seem that the nonprofit, corporate, and civic sectors always talk about coding as a way to get a job, as opposed as a way to make change? We know that youth today are demanding careers that have a sense of purpose and meaning and to me, coding and STEM is just as much about art, language and problem solving as any of the other programs listed above. How can we change the narrative about these vital skills?

In conclusion, this is why SCE is so cool. I get to take these questions that arise from the first step of a process, talk to other people who are doing this work, and let that inform our grantmaking strategy moving forward. Stay tuned…

Sarah Kammerer is the Digital Learning Program Officer at SCE.