Quality Counts provides tools, training

by Bina Lefkovitz
Co-Director, Youth Development Network

Georgetown Divide Ready by 21™, Inc. and Youth Development Network (YDN) are partners in the Forum for Youth Investment’s national Quality Counts (QC) effort. Ten areas were selected to participate in this effort. QC brings a focus to why communities need to invest in supporting youth program quality, and supports communities in strengthening quality programming.

QC brings the Center for Youth Program Quality, a joint venture of the Forum for Youth Investment and High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, and the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) tool to the Sacramento area, including a series of trainings on how to use the tool, how to create program change with the data, a train-the-trainer on becoming a YPQA coach and program assessor, and a youth worker summit to build skills of youth workers. In addition, the local QC team is developing a youth worker certificate program with local community colleges, examining an adult education program through high school districts for youth workers, exploring some models for high school-based efforts to expose students to youth development and careers in the youth field. Additionally, in the winter, there will be training on the Ready by 21 planning tools.

On June 24 from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m., a special Sacramento-region phone webinar with the Forum for Youth Investment will be held to review their youth program landscape mapping tool and to link local resource mapping efforts together. Learn more about the Forum’s resource mapping tool, how it is being used around the nation and what it takes to do resource mapping. We will use the time to identify who is doing or interested in resource mapping in the region so that we can learn from each other and ensure the data collected is better shared across the region.