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To The Reader . .
A letter from
Wokie Weah
Black History Month Celebration 2014
February 21, 2014.
Honoring our Common Heritage and Promoting Solidarity is an opportunity to commemorate
Black History Month with a series of events that embrace the insight, resourcefulness, and energy
of today’s youth, while also tapping into the strengths
of Black culture and history. This year’s event will focus
on diversity among Minnesota’s Pan African population
and will include dialogue on promoting unity
and reconciliation among the many groups representing
the African Diaspora and living in the Twin Cities.
Dear Friends,
Philanthropy Breakfast. Co-sponsored
by the Minneapolis Public Schools Office of Equity &
Diversity, this event will engage public and private funders and other stakeholders in a dialogue about
how they can support efforts toward building leadership and learning opportunities for young people.
As many of you know, this past October Youthprise held our first annual summit,
Accelerating Leadership and Innovation Beyond the Classroom. One of the major
focus areas was on collecting and using data to improve programs and systems.
Community Forum. This youth-directed forum will include a range of presentations
and performances by local youth involved in out-of-school time programs. Local sheroes and heroes
will be honored for their work in building the capacity of young people in our local community.
The program will close with an intergenerational choir led by Grammy Award Winning
recording artists, Sounds of Blackness.
In this publication you will read about the innovative ways that research and data are used
internally and in the field to create change. Sprockets and Northfield Healthy Communities
Initiative use data in their coordinated efforts to move systems change. Youthprise’s
youth research team uses data around holistic indicators to measure the success of other
Minnesota youth – an approach that is gaining traction nationally.
We’re working with Rainbow Research to evaluate our internal youth engagement work,
and we released initial results from a baseline study that measures the opportunity gap in
access to quality learning in Minneapolis, a study that we will continue in St. Paul in 2014.
Youthprise partners are also using data to improve and accelerate the work in the OST
field. We are partnering with the University of Minnesota Extension’s Center for Youth
Development and Dale Blyth, PhD, to increase the understanding of socio-emotional skills
and learning from Gene Roehlkepartain at the Search Institute about measuring noncognitive skills. We’re looking forward to new research commissioned by the Wallace
Foundation that will further develop our understanding of the impact of non-cognitive
factors on youth success.
Take a dive into this issue of the NewsFlash to learn about the innovative ways that data
is being used and to learn about coming innovations in 2014!
Wokie Weah
President of Youthprise
Contact Us with any feedback or questions
Read on and please join the conversation on
our Facebook and Twitter pages
Alyssa Roach
[email protected]
[Youthprise] Newsflash
Facebook.com/Youthprise
Youth Innovator Contact
Twitter.com/Youthprise
Lizzy Shramko
Find out more about who & what makes
Youthprise tick at...
612.564.4858 ext. 95
[email protected]
www.Youthprise.org
Creative Design by Adeeb Missaghi
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UPCOMING
EVENTS
AdeebmDesign.com
Volume NO 2 • Issue NO 1 • January 2014
Communications Associate
Karen Kingsley
Director of Public Policy
and Communications
612.564.4858 ext. 5
[email protected]
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