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Summer 2020 Partner Update: Our Collective Commitment to Youth

Dear Partners,

As I walked out of the America’s Promise Alliance offices in March, I never imagined that six months later I would be writing this message from my kitchen as my wife and I juggle two jobs and two small children who are starting school virtually. As we navigate one pandemic, we are also dealing with the senseless murders of Black Americans by law enforcement and widespread unrest. While I am disheartened by the reality that young people are at the center of both of these national crises, I remain optimistic and energized by two important truths that this moment has revealed:

(1) young people are leading the way toward solutions, and
(2) our collective work, guided by youth voices, is particularly relevant and urgent at this moment in time.

These two truths were on full display during our recent Youth Townhall on the Return to School ([link removed]), cohosted with The 74 Million, and sponsored by Pure Edge, Inc. and Sanford Programs. In this conversation, young people weighed in on topics ranging from how to foster connection and relationships in a virtual learning environment to how schools should provide opportunities to have real conversations about race and racism. While demonstrating that young people have insightful, actionable solutions to the challenges we face, the conversation also revealed that these challenges cannot be surmounted by one school or one organization alone. Our ability to work with and learn from each other, alongside young people themselves, is what will enable us to make long-overdue systemic change.

The Youth Town Hall is just one example of the type of collaboration that has been a silver lining of the last few months. Below are a few examples of that collaboration and our commitment to young people in action.

In response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we quickly compiled a wide range of resources ([link removed]) from across the Alliance to help educators, out-of-school-time providers, community leaders, and families support young people during this unprecedented pandemic. 

We released The State of Young People During COVID-19 ([link removed]), which captures the results of a nationally representative survey of 3,300 high school students on the impact of COVID-19 on their learning and their lives. The findings suggest that students are experiencing a collective trauma, and that they and their families would benefit from immediate and ongoing support.

We also released All of Who I Am: Perspectives from Young People About Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Learning ([link removed]), a report from our Center for Promise featuring findings from our qualitative study of more than 100 young people across six exemplar learning settings that intentionally focus on integrated approaches to young people’s social, emotional, and cognitive growth. This research demonstrates how supportive learning environments are nurturing young people’s sense of themselves as valued, multi-dimensional community members.

As we grappled with the impact of COVID-19 on high school students, it was important that we pause to celebrate the graduation milestone. Through our #Letters2Grads ([link removed]) campaign, in partnership with MENTOR, Learning Heroes, and ASCD, our partners from around the country wrote notes, submitted videos, or posted pictures with their well-wishes for the class of 2020.

We launched The Voices of Young People ([link removed]) platform to provide an outlet for young people to share their stories about life and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are expanding this project to include a wide range of issues young people are facing, including navigating employment, exploring community leadership, and addressing systematic racism.

We’ve been excited to collaborate with various partners on social media efforts around key issues affecting young people, including Twitter chats with over 20 alliance partners and co-led social media activation with CASEL around prioritizing youth voices and perspectives as decisionmakers contemplate the return to school.

In the wake of continued police violence against Black Americans, we released a joint statement, Racial Trauma and Young People: Why We Can’t Stay Silent ([link removed]), alongside nearly 100 Alliance partners who are committed to dismantling systemic racism. Building on that statement, Michael Powell, Vice-chair of our Board, published Systemic Racism: Why America’s Promise is Still Unfulfilled ([link removed]), reiterating the necessity of promoting racial justice as a core component of our organization’s mission.

In addition to calling out the problem of systemic racism and our intention to address it, it was and is important for us to publicly commit to clear, decisive action. As I highlighted in Racial Trauma and Young People: A Commitment to Action ([link removed]) and more recently in Moving Toward an Anti-Racist Future ([link removed]), we are committed to working with and learning from our partners to work toward an anti-racist organization and Alliance. Moving forward, we will work to ensure our organizational leadership reflects our constituencies, our funding promotes shared power with the communities we serve, and our language and actions work against stereotypes.

It has been a difficult few months for all of us, and while there is a long road ahead, I am energized by this Alliance’s collective commitment to listening to young people. The past few months have made clear that our collective leadership and our commitment to youth-centered change will help us come out better on the other side.

I want to thank all of my colleagues within America’s Promise and across the Alliance. While we are all struggling with own circumstances, we continue to keep young people and communities front of mind. I am especially heartened that the Alliance is taking on the deep and abiding challenges of systemic racism–it won’t be easy, but our collective commitment and sense of mutual accountability assure me that we will not let this moment pass without making real, lasting progress.

Thank you all for your continued partnership. Stay healthy and safe.

Campaigns and Initiatives in Action

AmericasPromise.org ([link removed])

Earlier this year, we released guidance ([link removed])to assist with decision-making related to the
high school experience and graduation during COVID-19, in partnership with the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, National College Attainment Network, Civic, Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), and Data Quality Campaign. We have also been holding regular office hours to provide more in-depth guidance to school and community leaders across the country.

We also released the GradNation Case Studies series ([link removed]), amplifying best practices from five community and state partners in collaboration with AT&T. The series covered
three topics related to improving the high school experience so more young people can reach the graduation milestone: holistic approaches to supporting young people ([link removed]), developing responsive pathways programming ([link removed]), and building effective partnerships ([link removed]). We’ve also hosted a webinar deep-dive into each of these topics. The final webinar, highlighting the ways in which communities have leveraged strategic collaboration to promote success for students facing the greatest obstacles to graduation, will take place on September 24—you can register here ([link removed]).

In addition to The State of Young People During COVID-19 ([link removed]) and All of Who I Am ([link removed]), the Center for Promise and our How Learning Happens team released a companion youth engagement guide ([link removed]), which outlines actionable strategies that educators, program providers, coaches, mentors, and other youth-supporting adults can use to authentically listen to young people about how they experience social, emotional, and cognitive development.

To more closely examine what social, emotional, and cognitive development has looked like during COVID-19, we hosted our How Learning Happens Now webinar ([link removed]), featuring youth participants and school leaders from the sites that participated in our earlier research. The webinar revealed several important insights from young people, not the least of which was the demand for schools to more explicitly address race and racism.

Along with our national focus on the effects of COVID-19 on young people, we have also been supporting our community partners as they worked to meet the challenges of COVID-19. We’ve hosted a number of action-oriented convenings on topics ranging from implicit bias to building authentic relationships. To read more about some of the work of our partner communities, check out these related blog posts: In Rochester, Supporting Those Who Support Youth ([link removed]) and In South Carolina, Efforts to Keep Youth Connected ([link removed]).

Earlier this summer,
we connected with
over 30 Alliance members and practitioners to provide tips and resources on navigating virtual summer internship programs. Click here ([link removed]) to view our first conversation. We also held a virtual discussion with more than 20 young people to learn what makes them feel Ready, Connected, and Supported. What we’ve learned from these conversations has helped inform our overall campaign strategies, including the work we’ve done to amplify young people’s voices with regards to how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their employment trajectories. 

To that end, we partnered with Grads of Life and Forbes.com on a summer blog series to elevate young people’s recommendations to employers who want to engage young and diverse talent during this unprecedented time. (Why Investing In Jobs For Young People Can Boost Economic Recovery ([link removed]); Teleworking As An Intern During The Pandemic ([link removed]); The Impact Of COVID-19 On Youth In Foster Care ([link removed]); 5 Ways Employers Can Support Black Employees: A Young Leader’s Advice ([link removed]); and Cultivating Young And Diverse Talent With GRACE ([link removed]))  

We were thrilled to provide a storytelling mini-grant to our community partner in St. Louis, Alive and Well Communities, to create 10 instructional videos as part of a Teacher Appreciation Self Care Series ([link removed]) in partnership with local school districts during school closures.  

We also had two academic articles approved for publication in the Journal of School Health December 2020 issue:  Every School Healthy: Creating Local Impact through National Efforts and From Consultation to Shared Decision-Making: Youth Engagement Strategies for Promoting School and Community Well-being.

We received over 240 submissions to the second year of the Power of Youth Challenge ([link removed]) and awarded more than 125 mini-grants for youth-led service projects across the country. You can learn more about some of this year’s most impressive projects here ([link removed]).

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Here are few of the experiences that young people have shared with us so far:

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more from students >> ([link removed])

Hear firsthand from young people who are experiencing learning environments that prioritize their social, emotional, and cognitive development.

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more on how learning happens >> ([link removed])

Youth tell their stories about how COVID-19 is affecting their employment aspirations.

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more on employment>> ([link removed])





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