Here at Vermont Afterschool, our mission is to support organizations in providing quality afterschool, summer, and expanded learning experiences for Vermont’s children and youth. We strive to do this through a variety of initiatives. We provide program leaders with opportunities to do professional development, participate in communities of practice, serve on committees and coalitions, enroll in courses through CCV, receive technical assistance, and much more — the list is ever-growing as we expand our outreach and increase our services.
With all of these initiatives (and more!) we are making an impact on programs statewide. And while we know this intuitively, we’re excited that this year we have strong supporting data to help illustrate our impact. This past year, we made a conscious, rigorous team effort to track all of the program sites in the state that we have served and the various ways that we have done so.
Town level impact
We can begin to look at our collective impact for 2018-19 on the town-by-town level. There are 255 towns in Vermont, and 172 of them have afterschool, summer and expanded learning programs that serve children and youth. On the map image below, these towns’ borders are outlined. In 2018-19, Vermont Afterschool impacted programs in 74% of towns with afterschool, summer, or expanded learning programs, which was 128 towns in total. The map shows these towns shaded in blue. The darker the shading, the greater our impact. In towns where we either impacted multiple sites, and/or where program leaders themselves engaged with us in multiple ways, our impact is greater. You can check out the dynamic version of this map with more detailed notes here.
Program impact
From July 1,
Leaders from…
- 101 program sites participated in one of our year-long Afterschool Professional Learning Strand,
- 91 program sites attended our annual conference,
- 90 program sites attended professional development trainings and workshops,
- 39 program sites worked with us to increase their social-emotional learning programming through our Northfield Savings Bank Youth Resiliency Initiative,
- 37 programs sites engaged in continued education by enrolling in our CCV courses,
- 25 program sites participated in state-level advocacy efforts by attending our Afterschool and Summer Learning Day at the statehouse AND by sending youth ambassadors,
- 19 program sites participated in communities of practice,
- 8 program sites testified to the state legislature about the benefits of afterschool and summer learning programming, and
- 7 program sites served on our VT9to26 Coalition for Youth Work and Policy.
We can also look at our impact on licensed sites that serve school aged children and youth. There are 251 licensed sites that serve mainly school age children, and in 2018-19 we served 50% of them — 126 in total. We served these sites in a variety of ways, but here are the top five ways that such program leaders engaged with us:
Leaders from…
- 55 licensed school age sites attended professional development trainings and workshops,
- 51 licensed school age sites attended our annual conference,
- 50 licensed school age sites participated in one of our year-long Afterschool Professional Learning Strands,
- 26 licensed school age sites worked with us to increase their social-emotional learning programming through our Northfield Savings Bank Youth Resiliency Initiative, and
- 23 of licensed school age sites engaged in continued education by enrolling in our CCV courses.
We also worked closely with all 101 21st Century Community Learning Center (21C) program sites that were funded in 2018-19; we served 100% of them, since directors and site leaders all participated in our Afterschool Professional Learning Strands.
In addition, 21C leaders from…
- 37 program sites attended professional development trainings and workshops,
- 36 program sites attended our annual conference,
- 28 program sites worked with us to increase their social-emotional learning programming through our Northfield Savings Bank Youth Resiliency Initiative,
- 21 program sites participated in state-level advocacy efforts by attending our Afterschool and Summer Learning Day at the statehouse AND by sending youth ambassadors, and
- 19 program sites engaged in continued education by enrolling on one of our CCV courses.
Stay tuned for part two of this post next month when we will look more closely at our impact through our professional development trainings.
