Staffed by the Center for Youth Engagement, Beyond the Bell is a collaborative effort driven by service providers, funders, youth, policy makers and public institutions all committed to ensuring that youth have access to coordinated and quality programs and services. This initiative is currently focused on programs and services for youth ages 12-18. This is a critical age group that is significantly under-served in Milwaukee and cities across the country.
Since 2013, partners have put forth a significant amount of work to explore national best practices, gather input from youth locally, and discuss the unique needs and opportunities for improving coordination of youth programs and services in Milwaukee. Beyond the Bell engages partners in working groups that develop sector-driven strategies to increase the coordination and quality of programs and services for youth.
Beyond the Bell was funded through the third phase of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Challenge, which focused on demonstrating how the Preparing Youth to Thrive content, training, performance measures and practices can be integrated into youth serving organizations across the country to improve SEL practice. Five afterschool system partners with local, statewide and national reach participated in partnership with David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality over the coming year. The initiative culminated in the release of case studies that will highlight the process of how each organization integrated the social and emotional learning supports and these lessons will be shared widely with the field.
