Vermont Afterschool, along with key partners at the Vermont Department for Children and Families and Let’s Grow Kids, will coordinate Governor Phil Scott’s recent directive to increase school-age child care this fall. Last week Governor Scott announced that the state would direct $12 million in federal coronavirus relief funding to increase the capacity of the… Read more »
Blog
“You’ve Got This”: Notes from the Social Emotional Roundtable Field Call
The weekly conversations between programs continued this week and focused on a reopening challenge that will impact virtually everyone on some level: maintaining awareness around our social and emotional health. There are some more general themes and then some specific resources that I’ll highlight here. The themes came from Sara Forward, LICSW of the Vermont… Read more »
Field Call Conversation on Staffing
On Tuesday, August 4th, a group of afterschool and other youth-serving professionals gathered to discuss the challenges that have been coming up related to reopening programs as they work on planning how to do so safely and effectively. The specified topic of the day was staffing, though the conversation ventured into other topics as well. … Read more »
Reopening Together: How Afterschool Can Partner with Schools
Afterschool programs are essential for meeting students’ needs during the COVID-19 crisis and throughout recovery. As districts release guidelines and schedules for the upcoming school year, principals and superintendents will drive decisions about how schools reopen and how they work with their afterschool partners. Collaboration between out-of-school time and in-school time is more important than… Read more »
Professional Development in 2019-20: In-person vs. Virtual
In 2019-20 we offered a total of 72 workshops, including in-person and virtual trainings. Here we take a look at the overall evaluations results and determine any major differences between the two types.
Vermont Afterschool Receives New Grant from the NSB Foundation
We are pleased to announce a new grant from the Northfield Savings Bank Foundation (NSBF), the charitable arm of the Northfield Savings Bank. A two-year $100,000 grant to Vermont Afterschool will provide funding for our Youth Leadership Initiative, an impactful project that puts young people at the center of decision-making in our communities through the… Read more »
Our Collective Impact in 2019-20
It’s hard to believe that we are wrapping up another fiscal year. FY20 certainly presented its challenges, but the field adjusted quickly to the unprecedented COVID crisis. Here at Vermont Afterschool, we continued to serve the field while adapting our outreach and professional development to be exclusively virtual (hello, Zoom). We were able to continue… Read more »
Vermont Afterschool Helps Programs Get Clean Hands This Summer
With the temperatures rising, many young people (and more than a few parents) are clamoring for summer programming this year. Many programs across the state have responded to step up and run in-person programming this summer. Vermont Afterschool has helped to guide program leaders through the requirements and guidelines that come with running programming during… Read more »
Stories From the Field: Encore
Contributed by Beth Chambers, Director of Encore Afterschool Encore, the afterschool and summer program with nine sites across the North Country Supervisory Union, has an “All Hands On Deck!” mantra right now that is fully inclusive of afterschool and summer program staff. We have had afterschool staff who worked in the NCSU Childcare for Essential… Read more »
COVID-19: A Perspective From Vermont’s Youth Centers
Recently Vermont Afterschool reached out to the youth centers and other drop-in based programs that serve adolescents and young adults across the state to see how they were doing, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vermont Afterschool convenes a group known as VYCA: The Vermont Youth Center Alliance. Programs meet up on monthly calls… Read more »
