What Is Ready by 21?
Are the young people in your community ready to tackle adulthood? According to research done by Gambone, Connell, & Klem (2002), only 4 in 10 individuals in their early twenties are healthy, productive, and connected to their communities.
Founded by The Forum for Youth Investment, Ready by 21 is a top-down approach to tackling the issue of readying our young people for college, work, and life. “The Ready by 21 Challenge is a call to action for leaders to think differently, act differently, and act together,” according to the Ready by 21 Web site.
Focusing on Youth by Using Data: nFocus Software
How do you prove that youth programs in your community are working? How do you gather data that will attract funders? How do you measure the impact your asset-building efforts are making on the community? These are the questions that nFocus Software strives to help communities answer with their TraxSolutions system.
According to their Web site, “The TraxSolutions Community tracking and outcome measurement solution provides an efficient and effective means of data management, including student attendance and progress tracking.” With this data, communities are able to measure impact, reduce costs, and secure funding for their youth programs.
The Assets and Assessment: The YMCA of Greater Seattle and the Youth Program Quality Assessment
One of the most important steps in any asset-building program is evaluation. Often, however, this step occurs only at the end of a program, and it can be difficult to determine what should be done with the information to improve the program next time around.
The Weikart Center is an innovative group focused on helping youth-serving organizations evaluate their programs at the point of service, then build improvement plans to modify programs. This sort of assessment is not simply an annual evaluation, but an ongoing intervention involving assessment, program improvement planning, training, and improvement.
The David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality is a Ready by 21 technical partner and the creator of the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA). According to the center’s Web site, the YPQA “is a validated instrument designed to evaluate the quality of youth programs and identify staff training needs.”
Taking the Challenge to Hampton: Hampton Coalition for Youth
Ready by 21 and Search Institute announced a contest, Take the Challenge Home, at the 2009 Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth conference in an effort to encourage HC • HY initiatives to start using Ready By 21 tools and resources.
Each award recipient receives $5,000 in funds that can be used for “taking the challenge,” as well as $1,000 in Search Institute survey services. The awarded communities will assist Ready by 21 and Search Institute by providing feedback about what it was like working with bottom-up and top-down styles of leadership.
One of the communities to jump at the chance to take on this challenge was Hampton, Virginia.
Additional Tools and Resources
- Top Down + Bottom Up = Comprehensive Community Change
from the Ready by 21 Breakthrough Session at Search Institute’s 2009 Healthy Communities · Healthy Youth Conference
