The National Institute on Out-of-School Time recently released its Afterschool Matters Journal. The journal includes a feature on the Beacon Schools founded in New York City. In this article, Carol R. Hill reflected on her experiences working with a Beacon school in San Francisco. From her recollection, she created her own collaboration theory. Her theory suggests that the strong relationships between community schools and CBO’s require partnership, collaboration, and power sharing.

 

This issue of the journal also highlights the Youth Action Crew (YAC) initiative that was created to assist community development through research, marketing, and mapping. Teams or "crews" of young students canvass their neighborhoods and interview community members. Afterward, the crew creates maps of youth-friendly places and distributes them to families in the community. These maps help to spark youth participation in out-of-school activities. YAC was created because most families do not know about events and activities inside of their community. YAC provides families with the information so that they can foster youth participation.

 

Whether it’s helping youth to participate in high quality programs or just things that they are passionate about, YAC gets students involved in afterschool activities. YAC is a professional initiative that gives proper training to YAC leaders. Each leader must complete a 10-week or 10 month curriculum that focuses on four phases: researching, map making, marketing, and community development. The study explains the entire YAC initiative in greater detail.

 

Both articles represent the importance of community building and partnerships.

These articles can be found in the National Institute on Out-of-School Time’s AfterSchool Matters Journal.