Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for year 2023 of this CYFAR grant were 80 Afro-American Middle School Youth in two Tulsa public middle schools. Despite obstacles due to the lingering effects of COVID, we partnered with two community organizations to serve a total of 244 youth. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Program Staff met weekly for a combination of reporting, task assignment and professional development. In addition, two annual profession development activities and a 40 hour training was provided. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Community reports are beingdeveloped and disseminated to partner organizations. A Facebook page and a University-Based webpage have been develop and material posted to disseminate results. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The United We Can program partnered with two community organizations to serve 244 African American youth. Youth participated in a number activities to build self-efficacy, enhance social emotional learning skills, create a sense of belonging to positive social institutions and be exposed to STEM education and learning. These included activities 1) in partnership with the Urban Coders Guild in which youth gained knowledge in computer languages and programming in through participation in coding workshops and activities, and 2) in partnership with the RISE program in which youth were exposed to Olympic athletes and trainers through the BMX Foundation. LeveragingBMX, as a sport, offers opportunities for students to practice persistence, resilience, teamwork, and life skills on challenging one of the longest and most challenging BMX Tracks in the nation with guidance from champions. The program enhanced students' abilities to thrive both inside and outside the classroom, actively impacting graduation rates, earning potential, and overall well-being positively.
Publications
|
Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:We targeted 7th and 8th grade Latino immigrant students who are struggling in their academic performance at two Tulsa Public School Middle Schools: Will Rogers and Edison. Approximately 90% of students at these sites are on the free and reduced lunch program. Changes/Problems: Due to the reluctance of youth to become involved in programming, we have struggled to maintain rigorous data collection. We are just now having renewed success collecting data. Due to COVID, success coaching was intermittent and conducted online. Programming was done primarily in brief activities and in the afterschool space due to restrictions resulting from COVID. Although East Central was not one of our pre COVID sites, because of our past work there, we were offered the opportunity to partner with East Central and took advantage of this opportunity. East Central and Nathan Hale (our site) are in close proximity and students from Nathan Hale were invited to participate in all activities. We continue working in Nathan Hale. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Weekly staff meetings with the PD provided numerous opportunities for professional development Staff participated in several PDTA networking calls and workshops such as, Volunteering in your Workplace and Working with Ethnic minorities. Staff attended annual CYFAR PDTA conference and attended numerous sessions. PD led staff in special training sessions around the growth mindset, habit formation, hope, and grit. We engaged with the OSU Lasso Center for two trainings on coaching. Staff participated in the Neuroscience Epigenetic and ACEs Resilience Training Three staff were invited to participate in the prestigious Hispanic Leadership Institute. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We presented at the Zarrow Foundation annual Mental Health Symposium in Tulsa, OK We presented at an annual conference sponsored by the Tulsa Health Department. We provided reports to Tulsa Public School administrators. Communicating on a personal level with School Staff What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Now that we are back in the schools, we have already recruited 60 youth into the program. We will continue recruitment until we reach 100+ youth We are developing an agreement with OSU-Tulsa to collaborate in a new summer program sponsored by OSU-Tulsa Additionally, we are working with OSU-Tulsa to develop a leadership program for youth who finish our program. Finally, we are working with a local foundation to establish a scholarship fund for youth who finish our program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
From 10/1/2021 to 9/30/2022, the Unidos Se Puede/United We Can (UWC) team continued to manage the COVID-19 crisis with families, students, and the school sites where we are working. The UWC team was not allowed back into schools until February 2022. During the months leading up to 2/22 the UWC team worked to support school administrators at our four sites to conduct home visits to families who had been non-responsive to calls to return to school or who had been inconsistent in their attendance. This activity helped support parents and increased their involvement in their child's education. We reviewed, adapted, and updated our program by developing a new six-session family workshop series using technology such that the workshop could be seamlessly delivered in person or online. We launched the workshop series in late March through April of 2022. Attendance was modest, but those that attended had glowing reviews. We continued to provide supports to youth around the development of emotional social learning skills through success coaching. We continued to promote positive peer affiliations and career exploration through our summer program that included twice weekly interactive sessions with community partners. Each day had a separate focus on health, science, or the arts and humanities. For instance: An activity in conjunction with the Tulsa Health Department exposed youth to different professions in the sciences that did not require an advanced degree such as a food scientist, hazardous materials, epidemiology, nurse, lab techs, etc. An activity with a mental health partner taught youth how to combat stress and anxiety by releasing dopamine in the brain through simple activities such as: reading a book, drinking water, doing yoga exercises, etc. Two fine arts days one at the Philbrook Museum in which our student received an exclusive tour (the museum was closed to the public) to learn about curating via the world-famous Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibit. The tour was led by the head curator and taught students about diverse aspects of art curation from the carpentry of shipping boxes to chemicals used in restoration processes to the horticulture science used in the museum's famous gardens. The second day at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center allowed student a "backstage" perspective of theatrical and musical performances including the science and technology behind lighting and sound. Professional actors taught students about the many strategies and techniques that actors learn to captivate an audience and project their voice without artificial amplification. Another activity taught students about Black history, diversity, and inclusion through a trip to the Tulsa Greenwood Cultural Center. There they learned about topics such as Black Wallstreet and met and listened to renowned poet Quraysh Ali Lansana. Each student received a signed copy of Mr. Lansana's recent book, Opal's Greenwood Oasis Other activities included: A workshop with officer Jesse Gardiola of the Tulsa Police Dept. Volunteering with Meals on Wheels and the Council of Safe Neighborhoods. Trips to institutes of higher education such as Tulsa Tech, the University of Tulsa, and Oklahoma State University. Trips to other museums such as: the Tulsa Aquarium, the Air and Space Museum, and the Bob Dylan Museum. During the trip to OSU Stillwater, youth interacted with approximately 24 Cooperative Extension Educators who volunteered their time to conduct a Reality Check activity in which students were exposed to budgeting and the realities of what life really costs as an adult and what different jobs will provide in terms of quality of life. We partnered with the Tulsa Opportunity Project to create an after-school program for youth at East Central Junior High. We created approximately 13 different clubs that were offered by community partners and conducted on a weekly basis during the Spring 2022 semester. To continue to build sustainability we had two community meetings with an advisory board and wrote two additional grants to start after-school clubs for youth.
Publications
|
Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:This project proposes to increase academic performance, reduce high-risk behaviors, and increase workforce preparation and entrepreneurship among African American youth who are at-risk for not completing high school. Research points to transitions in school levels (e.g., elementary to middle school) as key times to identify students at risk for dropout. The high context, high contact participants for this SCP are 7th grade African American students who struggled with the transition from elementary school into middle school and are high-risk for failure during the next transition to 9th grade, the grade with the highest indices of dropout (54%) in Tulsa Public Schools. Changes/Problems:Despite the significant obstacles presented by COVID 19, the third year of this Joint CYFAR SCP grant (2020-2021) has shown good progress. Oklahoma State University (OSU) has successfully used funding from different CYFAR grants to develop and implement the United We Can program with approximately 500 Latino youth and their parents over the past seven years. OSU partnered with Langston University (LU), the only traditionally Black Lang Grant University in the state, to adapt and implement the United We Can program in North Tulsa (where LU's Tulsa campus is located) with African American youth and their parents. Due to COVID-19 it has been very difficult to recruit new youth and parent participants into the program. To overcome this issue, we have coordinated with TPS our primary community partner to develop and implement our Summer 4-H Youth Academy in coordination with TPS efforts to leverage community partners to re-engage students with learning. In this way we will start enrollment during the summer rather than in the fall as in previous years. We have planned a robust list of educational and fun activities, have engaged families through home visits, text messages, and phone calls. We have planned pre-recruitment events to introduce families to our program and sign them up for a visit by a member of our team to enroll their child. In sum, we are putting forth every effort to engage youth and their families during these times. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training for staff was accomplished through: (1) weekly meetings to discuss progress and troubleshoot difficult areas, (2) monthly extended meetings that consisted of training on: coaching using the Check and Connect model, how to use Motivational Interviewing with children and parents, and incorporating social emotional learning and the growth mindset model, and (3) attendance to the CYFAR PDA annual workshop. In addition, regular meetings were held with staff to assess how they themselves were managing the COVID 19 crisis. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A progress report was disseminated to stakeholders and advisory group members. Several manuscripts were developed and disseminated through professional journals and conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Face to face instruction in the Tulsa Public School (TPS) was only recently resumed (March 2021). We have worked closely with the school and several community partners throughout the year and have been invited by the schools to help plan and run a summer program to re-engage with students and parents. We plan to use these efforts to recruit and engage 100 students. We plan to begin normal programming in the fall with the caveat that we will use our newly developed family workshops that were designed to be delivered in an in-person or online environment in the event a new surge in COVID that forces students to resume online instruction. Our programming will include the weekly family workshop series, regular success coaching, monthly family sessions, and a 4-H summer academy.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In response to the unforeseen demands of COVID-19, the United We Can team developed and began to implement a new delivery system that works with youth and their parents online. We developed a series of online 4-H programs that promote program goals and objectives by allowing youth and parents to interact with program staff around goal setting, problem solving, critical thinking, and emotion regulation. We developed a new family workshop series using technology such as Doodly. We developed an app to improve effectiveness of our success coaches. We maintained contact with Tulsa Public Schools and collaborated with them to help run their Care and Connect program that assisted low-income families navigate the COVID 19 crisis that included academic counseling, distribution of food, and home visits to assess and aide non-responsive children and families at risk for failing school. We also developed and implemented an online academic tutoring program. Developed and hosted several outdoor IT coaching events to teach our families how to utilize IT in the school setting. Developed an academic hotline for parents and children to call for help with schooling. Worked with community partners to host a back to school event (drive through), a neighborhood safety campaign to help calm tensions between communities and local law enforcement, and drive by flu shot vaccines. Finally, we hosted regular online family fun night events to help families relieve stress and nurture family cohesion.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Williams, A. L., Giano, Z., Merten, M. J., Herring, A., Delk, C. A., Gallus, K. L., ... & Shreffler, K. M. (2020). Middle School Teachers Academic and Behavioral Perceptions of Their Students and Expectations for High School Graduation. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 40(8), 1061-1086.
|
Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:This project proposes to increase academic performance, reduce high-risk behaviors, and increase workforce preparation and entrepreneurship among African American youth who are at-risk for not completing high school. The United We Can! program model is implemented, which includes a five-week family workshop series, monthly booster sessions, weekly one-on-one coaching, and a Summer Youth Academy. An interrupted time series design is used to assess performance and evaluate key outcomes of the project. This project promotes the CYFAR outcome "Teens," and proposes to increase knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior necessary for fulfilling, contributing lives. This educational research-based program harnesses key resources from two Land Grant Universities and diverse community organizations and focuses them on youth who are at risk of poor academic performance and other high risk behaviors with the purpose of providing them the skills needed to lead healthy and productive lives. To accomplish these outcomes, United We Can: Entrepreneurship Program addresses three primary aims known to impact academic attainment and workforce preparation: improving parental involvement, building youth self-efficacy, and creating a sense of belonging among a group of positively focused peers. Changes/Problems:Despite significant obstacles, the second year of this Joint CYFAR SCP grant (2019-2020) has shown good progress. Oklahoma State University (OSU) has successfully used funding from different CYFAR grants to develop and implement the United We Can program with approximately 440 Latino youth and their parents over the past six years. OSU partnered with Langston University (LU), the only traditionally Black Land Grant University in the state, to adapt and implement the United We Can program in North Tulsa (where LU's Tulsa campus is located) with African American youth and their parents. The convergence of four separate issues created delays in program initiation and reduced program-related expenditures. First, LU experienced three PD changes in the first 14 months of program initiation with significant periods of time in which there was no PD from LU to lead their portion of the program. All of the PD changes at LU were related to personnel leaving LU for different employment. The approval for the most recent PD change was further delayed due to CYFAR administrators moving their office from Washington DC to Kansas City. Second, during the first year of the grant, the school district engaged in a restructuring project that resulted in eliminating one of our target sites and delaying entry into the others. Third, LU also experienced some issues in establishing their post award protocols that would enable them to bill the grant for incurred expenses. Fourth, program activities were interrupted due to the COVID19 pandemic and the closing of schools in the Tulsa area. We have addressed these issues in the following ways: First, LU's Dr. Joshua Ringer has assumed the role of PD on the project and has begun meeting with the project staff to increase LU's involvement. We met with the Dean of Agriculture at LU to develop a plan to help ensure LU's involvement on the grant. Second, we have worked with the district to regain our access to youth in the schools and developed relationships with the new administrators. Third, the OSU grants and contracts office is assisting LU's grants and contracts office to help ensure their ability to bill the grant for incurred expenses. Fourth, in response to COVID-19 we have developed and began to implement a new delivery system that works with youth and their parents online. We developed a series of online 4-H programs that promote program goals and objectives by allowing youth and parents to interact with program staff around goal setting, problem solving, critical thinking, and emotion regulation. Finally, we have appropriately communicated the changes in LU's PD, the one change in our target sites, and our online delivery system to CYFAR administrators. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training for staff was accomplished through: (1) a 40 hour initial training, (2) weekly staff meetings to discuss progress and troubleshoot difficult areas, (3) monthly extended meetings that consisted of training on: coaching using the Check and Connect model, how to use Motivational Interviewing with children and parents, and incorporating social emotional learning and the growth mindset model, and (4) attendance to the CYFAR PDA annual workshop in Arlington, VA. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Progress report was disseminated to stakeholders and advisory group members. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With the addition of the LU PD and the support of LU's Dean of Agriculture, we plan to add an additional cohort of 100 youth and their parents. This will bring the total of youth-parent dyads served to 140, or a total of 280 individuals. We plan to increase the amount of youth served each year to offset our delayed start. Due to COVID-19 we have augmented our program with online 4-H clubs using zoom. Clubs expose youth to areas of natural interest such as computer programming, financial planning, mindcraft (math and science games), exercise, creating vlogs, and music. In each case, success coaches work with youth to establish goals and problem solve when goals are not met. In addition, all youth are all enrolled in Virtual Job Shadowing, an online program that exposes youth to professionals in different sectors of work. We have also started an online parenting group to work with parents around strategies to reduce stress at home and how to work with their children. We believe that this strategy successfully accommodates our current circumstances, and maintains our primary program objectives of promoting social emotional learning in youth and parental involvement. We are also currently engaged in research around how to make some of these changes more permanent with a view to being able to reach more youth with fewer resources in the future. This aspect is still in the research and development stage. We currently do not anticipate any budget adjustments to cover these expenses. Otherwise, we will engage in the same activities as described above and in our proposal. We expect that the next year of our program will provide significant increases in youth engagement in school, social emotional learning skills, and in parental involvement.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Despite significant obstacles, the second year of this Joint CYFAR SCP grant (2019-2020) has shown good progress. Oklahoma State University (OSU) has successfully used funding from different CYFAR grants to develop and implement the United We Can program with approximately 440 Latino youth and their parents over the past six years. OSU partnered with Langston University (LU), the only traditionally Black Land Grant University in the state, to adapt and implement the United We Can program in North Tulsa (where LU's Tulsa campus is located) with African American youth and their parents. The convergence of four separate issues created delays in program initiation and reduced program-related expenditures. First, LU experienced three PD changes in the first 14 months of program initiation with significant periods of time in which there was no PD from LU to lead their portion of the program. All of the PD changes at LU were related to personnel leaving LU for different employment. The approval for the most recent PD change was further delayed due to CYFAR administrators moving their office from Washington DC to Kansas City. Second, during the first year of the grant, the school district engaged in a restructuring project that resulted in eliminating one of our target sites and delaying entry into the others. Third, LU also experienced some issues in establishing their post award protocols that would enable them to bill the grant for incurred expenses. Fourth, program activities were interrupted due to the COVID19 pandemic and the closing of schools in the Tulsa area. We have addressed these issues in the following ways: First, LU's Dr. Joshua Ringer has assumed the role of PD on the project and has begun meeting with the project staff to increase LU's involvement. We met with the Dean of Agriculture at LU to develop a plan to help ensure LU's involvement on the grant. Second, we have worked with the district to regain our access to youth in the schools and developed relationships with the new administrators. Third, the OSU grants and contracts office is assisting LU's grants and contracts office to help ensure their ability to bill the grant for incurred expenses. Finally, we have developed and began to implement a new delivery system that works with youth and their parents online. We have appropriately communicated the changes in LU's PD and the one change in our target sites to CYFAR administrators. Several of our more salient accomplishments for this year have been: We enrolled 40 youth and their families in the program over the school year. Youth have responded well to our efforts and are participating in planned activities and success coaching. Youth sessions provide training in problem solving skills, critical thinking, emotional regulation, and basic entrepreneurship skill. Parent sessions help immigrant parents understand the U.S. academic system, how to successfully advocate on behalf of their child, and skills to address family conflict. In addition, low-income parents often suffer from social isolation and sessions provide parents with a natural network of like-minded parents, which helps to reduce mental health issues such as depression and anxiety and create new resources leading to resilience. A trained success coach met regularly (weekly or bi-monthly) with youth to help them develop program skills (problem-solving, critical thinking, decision making) focused on academic success, family relationships, and workforce preparation. The success coaches used data provided by the school district such as grades and absences to work with youth and further engage parents in youth schooling. We organized and conducted an eight-week summer program for youth. In the summer program youth met twice weekly to promote positive youth development through: · morning sessions conducted by certified teachers that were hired to help buffer against summer learning loss in core subjects; · exposure to diverse career opportunities through workshops and field trips conducted by community partners such as the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department and Engineers at AAON a local manufacturing company; · building comradery and a sense of belonging among like-minded youth. This is important for both the promotion of change and the maintenance of changes achieved. · a three-day trip to Langston University and OSU Stillwater where youth participated in 16 different workshops that exposed them to STEM-related fields. Workshops were provided by university professors and graduate students at no cost to the grant. Youth also spent the night in dormitories, ate in university cafeterias and interacted with students to demystify the university and promote a vision of a possible future self. 7) We worked with numerous community partners and volunteers who make significant contributions to the program. This raises community awareness around the cause of youth in general and of immigrant youth in particular and increases the social capital of youth through relationships with leaders in the community. 8) We continued meeting quarterly with a community advisory board. The community advisory board provides help in establishing essential community support for the program to promote sustainability. 9) We pilot-tested and implemented a rigorous evaluation collecting initial waves of data including common core measures from youth and their parents. Because these were initial waves of data, we have not conducted any analyses to show outcomes beyond program satisfaction, which has been good.
Publications
|
Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:Two key changes have occurred as follows: First, the Co-Project direction at LU-Tulsa, Dr. Lisa Weiss, for the Joint SCP recently left LU-Tulsa and has been replaced by Ms. Marla Mayberry. Ms. Mayberry's Biosketch and Current and Pending are attached for consideration. Second, McLain 7th Grade Center, one of our identified sites in Year 1 will be closing due to restructuring by Tulsa Public Schools. We have worked with community partners to identify another Middle School serving the North Tulsa area, Nathan Hale Jr. High School. The four community sites will now be: Monroe Middle School, Webster Middle School, Central Jr. High School, Nathan Hale Jr. High School. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?By the end of Year 2, we will have hired and trained the following to work on this Joint SCP: A Program Coordinator (.5 FTE), will dedicate 50% of his time to the overall joint SCP project. Half of his time will be dedicated to the two OSU sites and half of his time will be dedicated to the two Langston University - Tulsa (LU-Tulsa) sites. Under the direction of Dr. Cox, he will coordinate project meetings, hire, train, and supervise all project personnel, create and implement the project plan of work, develop and help maintain community partnerships, conduct quality assurance checks, provide technical assistance to community sites, manage project expenses, serve as a liaison between program and evaluation personnel to help coordinate evaluation efforts, and help prepare project reports including the CYFAR annual report, the NIFA REEport, required common measures, and stakeholder reports. A field coordinator (.5 FTE) will dedicate 50% of her time to the overall project. Half of her time will be dedicated to the two OSU sites and half of her time will be dedicated to the two LU-Tulsa sites. She will assist the Program Manager with program implementation including helping with recruitment, making phone calls to remind parents and youth about events, coordinate promotional materials (handouts, facebook, webpage), purchase supplies, maintain communication with community partners and parents, draft documents, maintain a calendar of events, take and disseminate meeting notes, assist with personnel issues, scheduling of activities, and report generation. Two success coaches (1 FTE each), will dedicate 20 hours per week per site. A third success coach will be hired at the end of Year 2 to begin working with recruitment of the next cohort of youth who will enter the program on approximately May 30th (3 months of work). Success Coaches are hired from the same community as the youth they serve and will: 1) be trained in the It's My Business, Growth Mindset curriculum, the ICF success coaching curriculum, the UWC family involvement workshop curriculum, Motivational Interviewing, and technology tools for success; 2) partner with school to identify 20 at-risk Latino students and recruit them to participate in the program; 3) assist Program Manager and community partners in the monthly 4-H clubs in each school; 4) oversee one-on-one success coaching opportunities and activities for program youth; 5) plan for and implement the 5-week UWC workshop series in each school; 6) use technology to help students and parents stay engaged and progressing towards their goals; 7) assist in monthly follow-up family nights; 8) maintain regular contact with parents and encourage their involvement in school; and 9) help plan for and implement the Summer Academy. Success Coaches will develop a monthly student report for every youth and share this with the Program Manager. The report will be used to develop a plan for the following month to provide the services and support to meet each youth's particular needs. An evaluation assistant (1 FTE) will be in responsible for data management and collection, cleaning of data, running of analyses, and reporting to CYFAR and NIFA. The evaluation assistant will also work with Tulsa Public Schools to obtain archival data (e.g., grades, absences) on each student, create and manage lists of students for recruitment and event attendance, generate dosage variables, track retention and dropout rates, and conduct quality control checks. 4 data collectors (part time as needed) will make home visits to collect evaluation data and consent forms from each participating family. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The preliminary work and accomplishments of Year 1 have positioned this CYFAR Joint SCP to be successful moving forward. Over the next several months we will recruit youth into our UWC Summer Academy, and start working with parents during the UWC Family Workshop series and subsequent Family Fun Night booster sessions. We will hire two additional success coaches by June 1st and involve them in the Summer Academy to build relationships with the youth so that success coaching can begin in September 2019. Our evaluation plan is ready to go and we will begin collecting wave-1 and wave-2 data this summer as part of our interrupted time series design. Our primary objective is to recruit 20 youth and their parent/guardian per site into the program for a total of 80 Families impacted during our first Year of programming. We expect to continue to refine our recruitment efforts, programming, training of staff, and promotional materials as we work during this Year. To the extent that we make changes we will have new outputs. Although we expect that youth and their Families will undergo changes in attitudes and behaviors during the upcoming Year, these may not be evident in our evaluation until the following Year. However, our ongoing evaluation of recruitment and retention strategies, as well as participant acceptance of our programming efforts are likely to produce outcomes in form of conference presentations, peer reviewed articles, and other documents outlining best practice and lessons learned. The only major change made to the UWC program is to begin recruitment during the summer after completing the 6th grade. Our original plan was to begin programming in the fall of 2019 when youth are beginning the 7th grade. We base this decision on the following: First, we have learned that there is a hesitancy to participate among the African American population in the North Tulsa area that has shipwrecked many other programs. We believe that recruiting youth into a program during the summer when, relatively speaking, they have fewer activities competing for their time will help us reach our goals. Second, parents in Tulsa are often hard pressed to find suitable activities for their children during the summer and having a program that helps them academically and allows them to have fun will be appealing. Third, our past experiences working with youth in success coaching has revealed that trust must be established before the mentoring aspect of success coaching can be successful. We believe that allowing children to bond with their success coach over the summer will allow the coaching to be more effective earlier in the process. These changes will not affect our budget. A revised timeline is attached.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The United We Can (UWC) joint CYFAR SCP utilized the first year of the CYFAR award to gather additional information from the community, develop recruitment strategies to ensure successful programming efforts, adapt our successful program with Latinos Families for use with African American Families such that we are now one program serving two populations, hire and train key staff positions, and begin work on a sustainability plan that includes the formation of strategic partnerships with community organizations and parents. Some Accomplishments for Year 1 include: Recruitment strategies. As a first step, we developed strategic partnerships with numerous community organizations in the North Tulsa region. Partnerships were formed using focus groups and listening sessions to help us develop strategies on how to recruit youth and engage Families into the program by building on what others have done. From this work, we learned that many organizations have had difficulty recruiting Families and that there is a general hesitancy in the African American community in North Tulsa to engage in any programming efforts. We learned that there are two groups of parents in the community and that it is generally the same Families who are involved in different efforts, but the other group rarely participates. We determined that it is important for our program to access the uninvolved parents and youth. To overcome this barrier, we have developed a three pronged approach. First, we have been working to identify natural leaders in the community and to work to gain their trust by helping them accomplish their own program goals. Second, we have been researching the scientific literature to find what other researchers and programs have done to successfully engage the African American community. Third, we have held several preliminary events to test our strategies. In each case these have been met with modest success. One outcome from these efforts has been to change our engagement plan in three important ways. First, we will recruit youth into our summer program (UWC Summer Academy) before we begin working with their parents in the fall. Based on feedback from the community, we believe that by establishing relationships with youth around fun activities, these same youths will help us recruit their parents. Second, we are going to include a remediation program to help youth who are falling behind in their academics. We believe that this will appeal to parents who are concerned about their children's future, but are leery of parenting programs that may inadvertently send the message that parents are in some way deficient. This will also help us gain the trust of their parents as we begin to establish a reputation in the community, a necessary condition for engaging this population. Finally, we are also going to use youth as recruiters of other youth in what has been termed in the research literature as respondent-driven sampling (RDS). RDS has been shown to be effective recruiting hard-to-reach populations. Integration of one program with two populations. During this first Year of programming, PD Cox hired a Program Coordinator and a Success Coach for the new United We Can (UWC) initiative with African American Youth and their Families. Both the program coordinator and the success coach were trained in an initial 40-plus hour training on the UWC program model. Additionally, PD Cox has maintained weekly staff meetings to incorporate the UWC staff with the existing Unidos Se Puede staff. One output has been to successfully integrate the two programs into one United We Can program that serves two populations (African American Families and Latino Families). A second output of this effort has been the adaptation of the UWC program components, initially designed for Latino Families, for use among an African American population. This includes the UWC Family Workshop Series, the Family Fun Night booster sessions, and our 4-H Entrepreneurship program. A third output has been the integration of our UWC Summer Academy for both populations. Feedback from community partners revealed growing tensions between the Latino and African American populations in Tulsa. However, per reports from school personnel, much of this tension is not yet present among middle school students. As a result, the UWC staff decided to integrate youth from both programs into our UWC Summer Academy to build bridges between the two communities that would prevent the development of racial tensions. This summer youth African American youth and Latino youth will participate in one program that promotes team building, life skills, and positive future possible selves. Youth will participate together in 16 different activities including a trip to Langston University and Oklahoma State University. We expect these efforts to manifest in positive changes in the Social Conscience, Personal Values, and Caring scales from the CYFAR common measures. Staffing. As mentioned above, a Program Coordinator and a Success Coach were hired for the UWC program. In addition, we hired an evaluation assistant to help with researching the literature on recruitment, developing IRB protocols including corresponding consent/assent forms, setting up Qualtrics surveys, and developing a codebook and database. The evaluation assistant has also been involved in norming measures for use with high risk ethnically diverse audiences to help ensure a rigorous evaluation. We have developed job descriptions for the different positions involved in the UWC program and will hire two additional success coaches to help with summer activities and to work with youth and Families over the next program year. We have also worked to refine training materials to be sensitive to the needs and approaches of ethnically diverse staff. Sustainability. We have begun a sustainability plan that includes identifying individuals from the African American community to serve on a community advisory board. We have also begun working with a sustainability coordinator. The sustainability coordinator is working with us to formalize by-laws for our advisory committee and to identify ways to raise funds from local philanthropic organizations to help sustain the program. We have also explored the development of a new 501(c)3 designation. These efforts are currently in the exploratory stage and will be formalized as we enter Year 2 of the CYFAR Joint SCP. As a part of our sustainability plan we have also developed promotional materials that will be printed in the upcoming weeks. Promotional materials will be used to communicate with community partners, raise awareness of the UWC program, and recruit Families into the program. Another aspect of our sustainability plan has been the active development of community partners. Community partners were established by attending meetings, hosting and participating in listening sessions and networking with organizations currently working in North Tulsa. The North Tulsa community and our other partners have expressed great enthusiasm around our planned activities. By integrating the two projects UWC Latino with UWC African American, we anticipate helping to reduce racial tensions in the city. We have already seen impacts from pairing UWC Latino youth with the Tulsa County Sheriff's department this past summer, a traditionally adverse relationship. Sherriff's deputies had opportunity to interact with Latino youth in a positive context and the youth were able to see the Sherriff's deputies as normal human beings. We anticipate that more of this type of mutual understanding will occur as we help to integrate different sectors of the city that have been traditionally alienated. We also anticipate that African American youth will have increased academic, emotional, and social competencies after participating in our program.
Publications
|
|