Positive Coaching Alliance: Bringing SEL Training to 400,000 Youth Sports Coaches

More than forty million young people play sports each year. Combining physical activity, play, and collaboration, sports have near-limitless potential to help young athletes develop social and emotional skills like grit, empathy, and teamwork.

But these outcomes are not guaranteed—especially in a youth sports culture that over-values specialization, social comparison, and winning from early ages. Only 38% of kids ages 6-12 played team or individual sports on a regular basis in 2018, down from 45% in 2008.¹ To put it simply, kids are burning out.

However, a good coach can make a major difference. Young people who identify at least one supportive adult within their social networks achieve better outcomes across a range of academic, behavioral, and health indicators.² For kids who play sports, a coach can become that transformational figure.

Beyond building sport-specific skills, coaching requires a nuanced skillset that is developed through ongoing training and professional development. Life lessons are not implicit and youth don’t learn them simply by playing; coaches need training to promote the social and emotional skills that help kids succeed both on and off the field.

Just like teachers and parents, coaches can play a critical role in promoting the skills kids need to thrive. That’s why we’re partnering with Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) to train 400,000 coaches in social and emotional learning and positive youth development by 2023.

PCA’s mission is to create positive, character-building youth sports environments that result in better athletes and better people. With support from SCE, PCA will train coaches across the country in key youth development techniques that are proven to promote SEL skills—leveraging a proven virtual training for the foreseeable future, then transitioning to in-person training once it is safe to do so. They will be making a special effort to invest in places where the need is greatest; 50% of all training will be done in underserved communities. PCA will also invest in their marketing and technology infrastructure, including a data system that will track which coaches are being trained and where.

Through this partnership, PCA will equip a generation of coaches with the skills they need to help millions of young athletes succeed—at a time when those skills are needed most. As our nation’s youth cautiously return to play in the era of COVID-19, they emerge from a period of unprecedented uncertainty. Isolation, virtual schooling, and a childhood interrupted have affected young people’s lives in ways we’re only just beginning to understand. We need to empower coaches with the training they need to help young athletes through this challenging period.

Beyond coach training, we hope this effort jumpstarts a critical conversation about what it really means to be a good coach. We’re grateful to PCA for their partnership and look forward to learning from their work.

Read our joint press release with PCA about this partnership.
Learn more about PCA here.

¹ 2019 State of Play, Project Play, The Aspen Institute, https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/reports

² MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, http://www.mentoring.org/

Photos © Positive Coaching Alliance

Deborah’s Place: Confronting Homelessness Across Chicago

COVID-19 affects everyone—but it doesn’t affect everyone equally. People experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to the pandemic’s consequences. In the midst of this crisis, Deborah’s Place continues to offer women* experiencing homelessness the stable housing, wraparound services, and opportunities they need to move forward.

When Gloria stepped through the doors of Deborah’s Place, a homeless-serving organization in Chicago, she was out of options. She had been living in the park for a long time. She struggled with substance abuse. And she didn’t have friends or family that could take her in.

According to Michelle Patterson, Development Director for Deborah’s Place, the isolation Gloria felt is commonplace for people experiencing homelessness. “We are committed to creating a supportive community for our residents,” says Patterson. “We want to create a sense of belonging where they don’t feel so isolated. We want them to know that people care about them.”

According to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, over 80,000 Chicagoans experienced homelessness in 2016. From the perspective of those with steady housing, much of this is invisible; 80 percent of those people were living “doubled-up,” in the houses of friends and family. The remaining 20 percent are people like Gloria: people who live on the streets because they have nowhere else to go.

Women experiencing homelessness face additional challenges. Basic hygiene is one of them, with bathrooms and menstrual products hard to come by. Violence is another: compared to men, women experiencing homelessness are vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. Even when they get to shelters, women still can feel unsafe—making it more difficult for them to recover from trauma and move forward.

For thirty-five years, Deborah’s Place has opened doors of opportunity to women experiencing homelessness. Their housing-first approach, wraparound services, and caring community has helped thousands of women in Chicago move from homelessness to housed and from surviving to living.

SCE’s Catalyst Grants address society’s most pressing issues by supporting organizations that approach them in innovative and promising ways. We were proud to support the exemplary work of Deborah’s Place with a Catalyst Grant.

A key differentiator for Deborah’s Place is their focus on permanent, supportive housing. Instead of operating as a drop-in shelter, the organization places participants in permanent housing units. While some of these are their residential buildings in Old Town and East Garfield Park, many are individual units in Chicago communities. Deborah’s Place doesn’t restrict how long a resident can stay in one of their units; they’d rather participants remain permanently than leave before they’re truly ready.

When Gloria came to Deborah’s Place over 20 years ago, she started in the original emergency shelter, which is no longer in operation. She participated in the daytime program as well, and when a space opened up in the newly renovated residential building in East Garfield Park, Gloria was one of the first residents. “We combine a housing-first approach and a harm reduction principle,” says Patterson. “We don’t prescribe or mandate any services; our residents set their own goals and determine their own paths.”

For Gloria, that path lasted many years. Even after getting permanent housing, she continued to struggle with substance abuse. During a medical checkup, her doctor told her she was going to die if she kept living that way. All of a sudden, something clicked and Gloria knew she needed to change.

With help from Deborah’s Place, Gloria sought out treatment. Today, she still regularly attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; she’s a leader in her group and has sponsored several others. She pursued a certificate in phlebotomy, then got a job. She started a nonprofit with friends to help other people struggling with homelessness and poverty. Now, she’s looking for an apartment outside of Deborah’s Place, so she can free up her unit for another woman who needs it.

Patterson says, “We don’t just provide housing. We make investments in the women we serve. Just like a financial investment, those investments can take a long time. But they’re worth it.”

Society’s poorest people remain vulnerable to homelessness. The gap between wages and rents continues to grow. Housing vouchers, mental health services, and healthcare are still inaccessible for many. Institutional racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT discrimination cause minorities to suffer more. Together, these factors make chronic homelessness one of the greatest challenges our society must address.

COVID-19 makes this challenge thornier still. In homeless shelters, social distancing can be nearly impossible—and the outbreak of the disease in shelters is well-documented. Furthermore, rising unemployment—especially in low-income communities of color—could lead to a rise in homelessness in Chicago and across the country.

In this context, the work of Deborah’s Place becomes more critical still. They’ve shifted the focus of some of their programs in order to meet the needs of their residents. “A major need is food and supplies,” says Patterson. “We’ve maintained food pantries in our buildings meant to supplement regular trips to the store. Now, demand is way up. Our staff members are going on grocery runs for residents who can’t do so themselves.”

For organizations like Deborah’s Place, donations remain critical. “We’ve been using the funds we’ve received for COVID relief to purchase food and necessities,” continues Patterson. “Our front-line staff is essential to keeping our buildings running and making sure every resident is managing this crisis and has the support they need. In addition to supporting our residents, we have to make sure we can support our essential workers who keep us going.”

When asked how individuals can support people experiencing homelessness at this time, Patterson offers three suggestions: “Individual donations offer nonprofits unrestricted support that they really need. Donating food, cleaning supplies, and other basic necessities saves us and our residents a trip to the store. And right now is a great time for people to be advocates—contacting their local government officials to ensure that money for the COVID crisis is going to the most vulnerable people.”

*Deborah’s Place is committed to serving both cisgender and transgender women. Cisgender women are women whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth; transgender women are women whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Announcing SCE’s Youth Voice Challenge Partners

When we announced our Tech and Society Youth Voice Challenge last winter, we sought the answer to a single question: How can young people inspire their peers to use technology in healthy ways and make digital spaces better for everyone?

Six months later, the world looks completely different. COVID-19 has impacted the health and economic futures of millions. Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are marching to demand an end to police brutality and to state unequivocally that Black lives matter.

Our Youth Voice Challenge was never intended to directly address a global pandemic or racial injustice. But as our society goes through this period of transformative change, youth voice will be more important than ever.

With the future of in-person learning uncertain, young people are spending an unprecedented amount of time online. More than ever before, they’re using technology to connect with their families, peers, classmates, and online communities. And for the foreseeable future, technology will be how young people explore, discuss, and take action around critical issues.

In this context, young people need solutions that help them build positive and productive digital environments. Those solutions must be designed, tested, and implemented by youth themselves.

We’re proud to partner with nine exemplary organizations in search of youth-led solutions for a tech-enabled world. Each of our partners brings a unique approach to this work. All of them engage youth as leaders. Over the next two years, we’re excited to collaborate with this cohort, learn from their expertise, and share our learning with the field.

Read on to learn more about our Youth Voice Challenge partners.

Beam Center: Beam Center is a New York City-based makerspace that brings together youth, artists, engineers, and educators. Together, Beam Center program participants produce ambitious, collaborative projects that support youth to take bold steps towards meaningful futures and foster conditions for educational equity. To support a vision of digital public health for everyone, Beam Center will train and empower two diverse cohorts of young people to conduct their own research on Healthy Digital Futures. Their project will also support youth as they create a platform where they can share their findings with peers, youth-serving organizations and policymakers.

Digital Harbor Foundation: In 2013, Digital Harbor Foundation transformed a closed-down rec center in Baltimore into a vibrant Tech Center for youth. Since then, they have offered workshops and programs about technology and maker skills to both youth and educators. Digital Harbor’s project will provide approximately 40 Baltimore youth with the equipment, training, and mentorship to research, produce, and market their own podcast that discusses the most pressing technology issues they face today. Using this platform, youth will lead critical conversations about the role of technology in society.

Erikson Institute: Erikson Institute is a hub of complex, creative thinking that empowers adults to help children reach their fullest potential. They bring the newest scientific knowledge and theories of children’s development and learning into graduate education, professional training, community programs, and policymaking. Their project uses teen voices and experiences to research, develop, and implement a technology peer-to-peer mentoring program. It will honor and highlight youth perspectives and experiences, leveraging a strengths-based approach to supporting young people in healthy media use while building relationships between older and younger youth.

Games for Change: Games for Change empowers game creators and social innovators to drive real-world impact through games and immersive media. They convene industry experts through their annual Games for Change Festival, inspire youth to explore civic issues and STEAM skills through their Student Challenge, and showcase leading impact-focused games and immersive experiences through live Arcades for the public. Their project, Raising Good Gamers, will inspire young people to shape the culture of online communities, advance youth leadership and advocacy for safe, diverse, and inclusive gaming experiences, and build positive game communities that counter toxicity.

PeaceCasters: Based in Louisville, KY, PeaceCasters is a youth-led program housed within the Peace Education Program (Peace Ed) that empowers young people in middle and high school to share their stories with the world in order to create change through digital and social media. Through their groundbreaking Youth Influencers curriculum, they support young leaders to be influencers on social media and in their communities by sharing stories from lived experience, practicing positive communication skills, and building community online and off. Their curriculum is based on three pillars: empowered storytelling, social media for social good, and online conflict resolution. The PeaceCasters program builds on Peace Ed’s 37 years of experience training youth and adults to build and sustain positive relationships, bringing these essential skills into digital spaces and onto social media platforms.

Project Zero: Housed in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the mission of Project Zero is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity for individuals and groups in the arts and other disciplines. Project Zero’s Reimagining Digital Well-Being will begin with empirical research that will help adults better understand the challenges that today’s youth face in their digital lives. Then, Project Zero will engage with youth in a participatory design project to develop a Digital Well-being Toolkit, which they will pilot and disseminate in partnership with youth-focused organizations.

Spy Hop: Spy Hop is a Salt Lake City-based digital media arts center offering in-school, after-school, youth-in-care, and satellite programming for students ages 9-19. Brave Voices, a youth-led participatory research, design, and media project, engages 400+ Utah youth in challenges, podcasts, and data storytelling to foster digital mindfulness and collective resilience. As digital auto-ethnographers, producers, and audiences, young people will create an open educational resource that shares both evidence-based insights and recommendations for building a better digital ecology.

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI): YCEI’s mission is to use the power of emotions to create a more equitable, productive, healthy, and compassionate society, today and for future generations. They conduct research and design educational approaches that support people of all ages in developing emotional intelligence and the skills to thrive and contribute to society. Their project will use a free program called InspirED to empower students to design and implement projects they believe best support healthy technology habits among their peers. Beyond the effects expected for participating schools, YCEI intends to promote these projects through its free website and share research findings about inspirED’s impact.

Youth Emerging Stronger (YES): YES’ mission is to provide runaway, homeless and foster youth (RHY) with safety, stability and housing, along with the relationships and resources to thrive now and in the future. They envision a world where resilient, self-assured, and hopeful youth are free from a life of homelessness and become capable of achieving positive, fulfilling futures. This youth-led project will help participants explore their own engagement with technology and ensure that their use of social media aligns with their long-term plans to enjoy academic and professional success. Once piloted, this project can be replicated for agencies serving runaway and homeless youth in Los Angeles and across the country.

How has COVID-19 impacted young people?

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely upended the lives of young people. Just a few months ago, we lamented the overscheduling of youth who spent hours of time on extracurriculars and homework after jam-packed school days. Almost overnight, classes went virtual and those out-of-school activities disappeared. In an instant, young people across the country have had to adapt to a way of life different from anything they’ve ever known. They’ve redefined their relationships with their teachers, families, friends, and technology.

So what do they think of all of this?

To put it simply, young people are dealing with a lot. According to our partner DoSomething, 94% of young people are concerned about COVID-19. These concerns take many forms: 63% of youth say that the health of themselves and their loved ones is their greatest priority, 82.5% fear that we’re reopening the country too soon, and 92% are worried about the toll the virus is taking on the economy.

However, youth are responding to this uncertainty with resilience and creativity. In the same survey from DoSomething, we learned that 34% of young people have begun to supplement their classes with independent online learning, 58% have picked up a new hobby, and 61% are doing indoor exercise.

We wanted to dig deeper into the complex reality that young people face today. So we asked a few teenagers how they’re handling the “new normal” of COVID-19.

Here’s what we learned.

SCE: How has school changed since this all started? What have been the biggest challenges? Are there any silver linings?

Gus, 14: “My school’s program was already self-directed, so it’s been an easier transition for me. I actually like what we’re doing now—I can wake up a little bit later, and I’m pretty good at managing my time so the flexible schedule works for me. Change is good!”

Alyssa, 15: “Honestly, I hadn’t realized how much I looked forward to going to school. Extracurriculars like soccer have been cancelled. It’s a real bummer.”

Ruben, 15: “Now, school is more at my own pace, which works better for me. Self-motivation is key.”

Susi, 16: “For me, it’s more difficult. I’m a very studious person, and even I’m procrastinating a lot. Normally I have lots of people pushing me, but now I have to be my own advocate.”

Khymari, 17: “One big thing that’s changed has been college applications. Because of COVID-19, scholarships are pushing back their application dates and the dates when you’ll hear back, so seniors have to choose which school they’re going to without knowing whether they’ve gotten a scholarship.”

SCE: What has changed about your relationships with your friends and family?

Diego, 15: “I’m really close with my friends, and now I can’t see them. I still text and FaceTime them all the time, but now it feels a little awkward.”

Susi, 16: “I was really down the first week, and I felt like nobody cared about me or what I was going through. I stopped turning in my work. My principal checked in with my mom, and we set up a call with my teacher. After that, something moved in me. Talking to my teacher made me realize that people did care—including the adults in my life.”

Khymari, 17: “My friends and I do a lot of video chats and Netflix parties. We also are still making plans for prom and graduation. We know that they aren’t going to happen, but it still boosts our spirits.”

SCE: Are you using technology any differently?

Gus, 14: “Technology hasn’t changed for me, but my brothers and I are using it a lot more. Our parents set some limits around our tech use, but they mostly trust us to make our own boundaries.”

Alyssa, 15: “Technology gives me an opportunity to talk to family and friends, but we’re still losing some connection. It’s hard to avoid getting distant.”

Khymari, 17: “The tone of social media has definitely changed. Way more people are talking about COVID-19, and I’m seeing a lot of people spread conspiracy theories and rumors. Different generations also are using social media in different ways. I’ve had to tell older relatives when something is fake news!”

SCE: What are you learning from this?

Gus, 14: “This whole situation is out of my control, so there’s no point in stressing about it if I can avoid it.”

Diego, 15: “I want to spend more time with my family once this is all over. I’m really appreciating the time I spend with my family now.”

Ruben, 15: “I appreciate having more time. There are so many things that I’ve said I wanted to do forever, and now I have the time to do them.”

Susi, 16: “I woke up pretty early for school, and I was usually on the bus by 6:00 AM. I miss taking public transportation and watching the sun rise. I want to appreciate the little things like that.”

Khymari, 17: “I’m going to remember how brands reacted to this, and that will affect whether I support those companies in the future. I’m also looking at how colleges—how did they treat their students during this time?”

As we continue to endure, adapt to, and recover from the shifting landscape of COVID-19, we must also keep young people like Gus, Susi, and Khymari in mind. Youth are deeply affected by the pandemic, but they often lack opportunities to voice their needs or share their opinions. Alongside our nonprofit partners, we’re committed to elevating youth voice and helping young people thrive—through this pandemic and beyond.

Note: this post has been edited from its original version.
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Report for America: Strengthening Local News in the Era of COVID-19

In the era of COVID-19, local news coverage is more important than ever. Report for America is making that coverage possible.

Across the nation, millions of young students are switching to online learning in response to COVID-19 related school closures. In Utah’s Navajo Nation, that transition is anything but easy. In this arid, rural landscape, internet signals are spotty—if they exist at all. Because of this, a community that has suffered from decades of government neglect risks falling even further behind.

If this crisis had happened five years ago, we might not be hearing this story. Thanks to Report for America, this issue is being covered.

Local news has a major money problem. The common narrative is that, as the internet grew in prominence over the last two decades, readers flocked to social media and online-only publications, leaving their local papers behind.

According to Report for America co-founder Steve Waldman, that isn’t quite true. “The problem isn’t that readers went to the internet,” says Waldman. “It’s that advertisers left. They went to Monster, then to Craigslist, then to Facebook and Google. A lot of local papers actually have bigger audiences than they used to, but they’re trading analog dollars for digital dimes.”

If newspapers can’t get funding from advertisers or subscribers, they can’t pay journalists to cover local issues—meaning that outside of large urban areas, people aren’t hearing the stories most relevant to them.

SCE’s Catalyst Grants are meant to address urgent issues like this by supporting organizations that approach them in new and promising ways. Last year we offered a Catalyst Grant to Report for America: an organization dedicated to strengthening communities and democracy through local journalism that is truthful, fearless, fair and smart.

Report for America corps member Kate Groetzinger interviews Navajo veteran Benny Fatt at a Veterans Day event.

After the 2016 election, The GroundTruth Project CEO Charles Sennott approached Waldman, a journalist and entrepreneur who had long advocated for greater investment into the collapsing local journalism industry. Inspired by programs like Teach for America and the Peace Corps, they founded Report for America.

Emerging journalists and local newsrooms both apply to Report for America, which matches them to one another and partially subsidizes the journalist’s salary. The journalist gains a year of experience in a newsroom as a full employee, covering an under-reported issue that’s much more prescient than the average first-year beat. In turn, the newsroom receives a talented journalist and the ability to cover an issue they might not otherwise have been able to afford. In addition, the newsroom gains invaluable fundraising experience: while Report for America covers about half of the reporter’s salary, they support the newsroom in raising the other half from their community.

Kate Groetzinger is a great example of how this relationship can work. After working at several Texas-based newspapers and receiving a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Texas, she landed a position through Report for America at KUER—the NPR station serving southeast Utah—covering indigenous issues. Thanks to this partnership, historically undercovered issues like the digital divide on indigenous reservations now have a major platform.

When Report for America launched in 2017, it did so with just three journalists. This past cycle, they received 1,800 applications for 200 positions. They’d like to place 1,000 journalists per year by 2024—an ambitious goal, but an important one. Says Waldman, “We’re expanding that fast because the size of the crisis demands it.”

An employee of a Cape Cod grocery store takes a phone order in late March.

Today, the local journalism crisis is compounded by another threat: the COVID-19 pandemic. To fight this invisible threat, communities must unify and cooperate. Accurate, relevant reporting is essential to fighting misinformation and educating the public on their role in stopping the spread.

“We talk a lot about the ‘information health’ of a community,” says Waldman. “COVID-19 has made us realize that you need good local journalism to have a community that’s literally healthy, too.”

Waldman is clear-eyed about how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting their local journalism partners. As donations dwindle and revenue-generating events are cancelled, many newsrooms are requesting greater subsidy for their journalists or pulling out of the program entirely.

However, many more newsrooms are doubling down. They recognize both the severity of the crisis and the role they can play in addressing it. Report for America is supporting these newsrooms by offering virtual training and remaining flexible when journalists switch to COVID-19 beats.

Today, good local news is more important than ever. We’re proud to have supported Report for America’s efforts to strengthen reporting in communities across the country—through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Learn more about Report for America today.

All photos © Report for America

What Can We Learn from COVID-19? Reflections from the SCE Community

In a recent essay in the Guardian, author Rebecca Solnit reflects on what we can learn from this current moment. “The outcome of disasters is not foreordained,” she states. “It’s a conflict, one that takes place while things that were frozen, solid and locked up have become open and fluid – full of both the best and worst possibilities.”¹

At SCE, we’re settling into our sixth week of remote work. As this starts to feel like our new normal, we’re beginning to leave “crisis mode” and start thinking about what our world will look like in a month, a year, or a decade. COVID-19 has broken open our frozen, solid, locked-up world, and as we pick up the pieces, we must also consider how to build the future we wish to see.

We’re particularly curious about how this crisis will impact our relationships with technology and the social-emotional development of our young people. So we reached out to the SCE community: nonprofit leaders, researchers, teachers, designers, and experts in youth development.

We asked them three questions: What is this crisis illuminating about the human-tech paradigm? What is this crisis illuminating about our relationships with others? And what will the world look like in one year—or five?

Here’s what we learned.

The crisis hasn’t changed the positives or negatives of technology. What it has done is amplify tech’s influence.

We have been debating the merits of technology since long before COVID-19 arrived. Depending on who you spoke with, technology could be either the saving grace of humankind or its downfall. As we see it, technologies are tools—tools with the potential to connect us and divide us. Our challenge has always been to understand those technologies, so that we can build relationships with them that are both powerful and purposeful.

COVID-19 hasn’t made tech better or worse. It has, however, made tech’s influence much more prominent. “The positives and negatives of technology have been amplified by the pandemic,” says Emily Weinstein, Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Project Zero. “We’re seeing the power of social media for so much good—humor, connection, mobilizing resources, staying informed—but also how the buzz of a New York Times alert can evoke immediate anxiety.”

When we asked our community about the impact of COVID-19 on the human-tech paradigm, they were split on whether technology was making their lives better, worse, or both. Some expressed gratitude for the videoconferencing technology that helped them connect with their loved ones, and for the medical technology that literally keeps people alive. Others lamented how video chats felt like incomplete substitutes for “the real thing” and worried that they turned to the internet and social media as “numbing agents.”

What everyone did agree on was that this crisis magnifies the prominence of technology in our lives. As we depend on tech as a lifeline, we have an opportunity to re-examine how we want our relationships with tech to be. “We really want to maximize the benefits of tech, and there are many,” says Tracy Foster, Executive Director of Stand Together & Rethink Technology. “We need to create norms around how to minimize the side effects.”

COVID-19 has highlighted the “digital divide.” When we imagine a post-COVID world, we need to do so with an equity lens.

For Calvin Stalvig, Director of Youth Programs at the Beam Center, a single moment illustrated a stark disparity that the pandemic brings to light. “When a shopper delivered groceries so that I could eat, I felt shame and guilt that his body was the one standing in for mine. My comfort and safety have been sustained by people who have no choice but to risk their health in order to avoid eviction or hunger.”

Many have framed the pandemic as a crisis that affects us all equally. It’s not. Due to decades of discrimination and under-investment, people of color and people living in poverty are more likely to have the underlying health conditions that make the disease deadly. These same communities are far more likely to have jobs that can’t go remote, meaning that they’re exposed to the disease more frequently. And young people in these communities are less likely to possess the technology that makes online learning possible—meaning that when schools go remote, those children risk falling behind.

In times of crisis, disparities like these become impossible to ignore. As we begin to envision a post-COVID world, we need to confront this inequality head on. The digital divide is a great place to start. “It’s imperative that we build a much more intentional equity focus into every element of systems design in this digital and tech-centered age,” says Lisa Guernsey, Director of Teaching, Learning, and Tech at New America. “That ranges from redesigning how we set up our healthcare system to designing educational and learning ecosystems that enable anytime, anywhere, learning.”

We’re beginning to notice patterns emerging from the current crisis. These patterns help us envision a post-COVID world.

When we first realized the magnitude of COVID-19, our collective reaction was one of crisis management. The more privileged grappled with how to transition to remote work, ensure that their kids could learn online, and manage the well-being of their families. Meanwhile, healthcare professionals focused on keeping us alive and essential workers made sure that we could all meet our basic needs. For those workers and the millions of Americans who now find themselves out of work, crisis management continues.

For the rest of us who are getting used to a “new normal” of extended social isolation, we’re beginning to notice patterns emerging from this worldwide realignment. In an era of unprecedented uncertainty, those patterns give us stability and hope.

Dr. Megan Moreno, adolescent medicine physician and professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin, has noticed an increasing connection between technology and well-being. “We are currently seeing patients via tele-health and it is so wonderful to reduce risks for them as well as for ourselves,” she says. “I really hope this incredible progress continues when we are on the other side of this pandemic.”

Stalvig adds that tech has already altered our education and political systems. “In five years, we will take online learning more seriously, as well as the degrees that it affords,” he predicts. “In five years, we will vote in an election online.”

COVID-19 is a crisis unlike any we’ve ever seen—for our physical health, for our mental well-being, and for the economic futures of millions around the world. But as it lays bare our society’s flaws, it also offers opportunities to redefine what we thought was set in stone.

This pandemic will leave indelible marks on our society. It’s up to us to decide what we want those marks to be.

1. ‘The impossible has already happened’: what coronavirus can teach us about hope, Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian

2. Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the work of nonprofits has never been more in peril. According to GuideStar, less than half of nonprofits maintain one month of operating reserves. As donations dry up, many organizations are facing difficult decisions: whether to cut programs, lay off staff, or shut their doors entirely.

At the same time, the work of these nonprofits has never been more important. COVID-19 does not discriminate about whom it infects, but communities of differing means have vastly different capacities to respond to the fallout. Lower-income communities where more people work in service industries suffer from higher rates of un- and under-employment. In communities with less access to technology, “remote learning” becomes nearly impossible. If the nonprofits that serve these communities shut down, we worry that those most in need will fall even further behind.

Since well before this crisis began, our partners have been laser focused on the needs of kids. These nonprofits work hard to ensure that kids can build critical SEL skills and healthy relationships with technology. As our nation’s children transition to online learning—potentially for months—the work of these nonprofits will help them succeed.

We’re determined to help our partners continue to serve youth as they navigate this challenging time. After speaking to our partners, other funders, and leaders in the youth development field, we’ve learned a lot about what nonprofits need right now—and made three commitments to support them through this crisis.

What we have learned:

All of SCE’s direct service partners have paused their programming. Most are grappling with maintaining relationships with young people while also addressing the mental and physical well-being of program participants and staff. While some are able to transition to virtual programming, the online version of their work looks dramatically different than “business as usual.”
Donations have slowed to a trickle, galas have been canceled, and endowments are taking a huge hit. Nonprofits are uncertain about when a government-funded recovery package will arrive. In these uncertain times, they are focusing on feeding kids, keeping kids safe, prioritizing kids’ mental health, and supporting staff.
Foundations are adapting to the changing landscape by transitioning restricted program funding to general operating support, providing seed funding for pilot virtual programs, and contributing to local emergency response funds (such as this one for Chicago).
We all need to be thinking about immediate, near-term, and long-term responses. While both nonprofits and foundations must evolve rapidly to respond to the immediate impacts of this crisis, we also must prepare for long-term economic impacts and potential changes to our education system.

Our commitments:

We will share best practices. We will continue to collect and share resources for kids, families, educators, and program providers adapting to a virtual learning environment. We are compiling the resources we’ve found on this blog post, and will share them on Facebook and Twitter on an ongoing basis.
We will help nonprofits transition to virtual support and programming. We encourage our current and future partners to develop online programs and research best practices in virtual learning. We will support them as they implement virtual experiences, expand access to technology for their constituents, offer online professional development for their staff, and shift to remote work.
We will continue to listen. Conversations with current and potential partners, other funders, and experts in youth development led directly to these shifts in our strategy. The only way we will weather this storm is by listening, learning, and working together.

Today, we face one of the greatest challenges we have seen in generations. But this unprecedented crisis offers us glimpses of a possible future—a future where remote work is commonplace, where technology facilitates connection, and where well-developed social and emotional skills matter more than ever. By working together, we can help nonprofits and the youth they serve to survive the present and prepare for the future.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

COVID-19: Resources for Educators, Nonprofits, Parents, and Kids

Whether you’re a teacher figuring out how to build a remote classroom for third-graders, a nonprofit transitioning to virtual programming, or a parent getting used to having kids around 24/7, COVID-19 presents a slew of new challenges. If you’re struggling to adapt to this “new normal,” fear not: our partners and friends in youth development have developed resources that will help you adapt.

For Educators: