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SOAR's Focus - School-Age Children & Youth
SOAR connects, convenes and catalyzes communities in King County in order to create a welcoming, safe and empowering environment to give young people ages 6-18 the opportunity to reach their full potential. |
Four Goals – School-Age Children & Youth
Goal 1. Access to Quality Out-of-School Programs: Children and youth have full and safe access to local, quality, engaging and relevant programs that help them succeed in school and in life.
Goal 2. Meaningful Roles: Children and youth have culturally relevant and age-appropriate opportunities to be leaders, decision makers, and engaged members of a community that values them.
Goal 3. Meaningful Relationships: Children and youth have positive, healthy, and nurturing relationships with caregivers, family, peers, mentors, program staff, and their community; these relationships guide and inspire them toward success.
Goal 4. Resiliency & Valued Identities: Children and youth build resiliency and participate safely, without experiencing or expressing bias, as valued members of diverse, conscientious communities.
Recent Accomplishments
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King County Youth Development Network:
- Provides both an online hub that centralizes resources & information and in-person networking, professional panels & training. KCYDN strives to build a more supportive, cohesive, well-connected community of youth development staff to ensure that all young people in King County have access to high quality programs and caring, supportive adults.
- Over 10,000 people connect to the site each year. Youth workers actively post youth development events, jobs, discussion, and blogs. The site regularly receives over 1,000 visitors per month.
- Monthly networking events raise awareness of local resources and encourage new partnerships. Topics include Youth Employment, Truancy Prevention & Intervention, Youth & Media, LGBTQ Youth, Youth Legal Resources.
Pathways to Partnerships Action Team:
- Interviewed local practitioners on partnerships between schools and community-based organizations. Developed a website to share resources, lessons learned and practical tools to support effective partnering (www.pathways2partnerships.com).
- Hosted a focus group on community school partnerships for Seattle Public Schools & the Alliance for Education.
Advocacy for Youth & Youth Workers Action Team:
- Hosted annual training on advocacy tools for youth programs and youth development staff.
- Presented current issues and opportunities to engage youth and youth development staff in advocacy.
- Supported over 100 students in visiting Olympia and meeting with legislators.
- Compiled youth-related advocacy resources and training materials to support increased engagement in advocacy.
Resiliency & Valued Identities Action Team:
- Distributed over 1,500 Multicultural Youth Leadership Curriculum copies throughout the US and internationally.
- Trained over 100 youth development professionals in implementing the Multicultural Youth Leadership.
- Updating the curriculum and expanding the training with curriculum developers and trainers.
- Hosting ongoing curriculum facilitation trainings.
- Creating webinars for each Multicultural Youth Development Curriculum activities.
Putting the Pieces Together Conference:
- This annual professional development and networking conference connects and informs over 400 attendees including a wide range of people working to support children, youth and families at different levels (direct service providers, agency directors, and community members, local government representatives) and all contexts, from grassroots to large organizations. Coordinated over 25 school-age and youth related workshops for annual conference.
Statewide Professional Development:
- Supported School’s Out Washington in the development of a statewide core competencies by 1) participating on the subcommittee, 2) convening youth worker events to inform two new competency areas (cultural relevancy and youth empowerment), and 3) conducting outreach to engage youth workers in the vetting and feedback.
Action Teams
Action teams meet monthly at locations around King County. Membership to SAIT and Action Teams is open and new partners are encouraged to join. If you are interested in joining or would like more information, please contact Kyla Lackie at kyla@childrenandyouth.org or 206-336-6937.