Accomplishments:
- UAN partnered with state-level decisionmakers and national experts to successfully launch Leadership Academy, a yearlong professional development initiative to build capacity of leaders at all levels to support and sustain high-quality afterschool/community school programs.
- UAN spearheaded the collaborative development of a conceptual Framework for Youth Success, which now serves as the basis for all UAN goals and activities.
- UAN established the UAN City Partnership Initiative as a follow up to the May 2010 mayoral luncheon—Safe, Healthy and Strong Cities: The Promise of Afterschool Programs.
- UAN completed a statewide Lights On Afterschool declaration endorsed by Governor Gary Herbert.
Current Projects and Initiatives:
- UAN is hosting four upcoming Leadership Academy events in 2011-2012 to facilitate interactive learning sessions in the community schools/ youth development fields.
- The Afterschool Funders Summit that UAN hosted in September 2011 brought together afterschool funders to engage in conversation about the potential opportunities for cross-sector collaboration of resources to best serve Utah’s youth. Participants also explored Utah’s continuum of services and discussed similar funding priorities. The summit produced three key outcomes:
- Clear determination of all afterschool funding sources statewide.
- Identification of afterschool funding opportunities for programs in alignment with local leaders around afterschool funding priorities within local communities.
- The establishment of common language among afterschool data points statewide.
- UAN and its partner, Voices for Utah Children, are colaborating to collect and analyze local afterschool data. A report will be published in 2012 to illustrate Utah’s changing student landscape, provide data on students, highlight current data on expanded learning opportunities statewide, make policy recommendations that support positive outcomes for youth and help working families.
- Under the direction of the national Attendance Counts Initiative, UAN is initiating the development of policies and systemic practices that take advantage of afterschool programs.
- UAN is promoting the inclusion of the Utah Data Alliance Data Share to use afterschol data to create a policy for sharing information between school day and afterschool leaders. This will enhance the state’s ability to assess the value of afterschool in supporting student success.
- In partnership with the Utah State Department of Workforce Services, UAN has developed a Utah Afterschool Professional Credential for OST professionals to receive financial compensation for obtaining professional development training.