StreetjibeLinking youth poverty solutions

Practitioner Learning Community Project

Street Kids International Overview Presentation

Brent MacKinnon

The Context

York Region Landscape

York Region’s size and transport issues limit access to services

54% of homeless in York Region are youth under 25 – 1999 Crosslinks

44,000: The number fed by York Region’s food banks in 2004-05.

Youth poverty in Canada is growing

Our Point of View

Value in working together

Strengthening how we work is inextricably linked to community capacity building

Silo thinking limits our capacity to effectively work together

Constant search for New funding

Funder RequirementsEvaluation Results

Meet Service Mandate& Agency Mission

Opportunities to learn from each other are missed

All service domains have unique skills & knowledge to share

Treatment

Education Outreach

Residential

Health

Practitioner Learning

Community

Innovation can grow from a network of diverse workers

Our 3 year pilot project aims to increase worker & program effectiveness

By

Increasing staff capacity to plan, evaluate & implement services

In

A Learning Community

Made up of workers from diverse sectors

What are Learning Communities?

A Learning Community is made up of groups of people who share a passion for something they know how to do and interact regularly to learn how to do it better.

Workers learn from each other and infuse learnings within their Agency

Apply new engagement

skills

Worker effectiveness Is increased

Share experience & Knowledge

Adds capacity to organizations, constituents & communities

Networks

Staff

Programs

Governance

By learning from our tacit knowledge, we are strengthened

Practitioners outcomes (and organizations and community)

Are

Improved access to needed services

Increased evaluation skills for practitioners & program effectiveness

Better bridges for expertise to flow between organizations & staff

New engagement strategies & skills to deliver your services to/with youth

Increased evidence of growing best practices across sectors

A learning community - a cost effective tool for capacity building

Proven research on resilience & asset models, drive our thinking

An analysis of 40 years of research found the bestpredictor of successful change are two factors:

1) engagement in meaningful relationships1) engagement in meaningful relationships2) engagement in meaningful activities2) engagement in meaningful activities

83%83% of change involves these two factors17%17% is a result of technique

Youth will have more access to relevant programs & skilled workers

Street Kids International

Capacity Building in York Region

& Around the World

There is a York Region base of established partnerships

Expertise in capacity building & engaging partnerships span 19 yrs.

Street Kids International's presence

geographical reach.

Our Plan

Streetjibe is front line youth workers meeting regularly to learn from each other and applying that learning in their programs.

They share these new learnings within the youth service community so youth experiencing poverty will have increased access to effective and relevant programs.

Our learning community can make systemic changes in youth work

Increase effectiveness by learning together & applying new skills

Year I - establish a learning community of 18 – 24 practitioners

Treatment

Education Outreach

Residential

Health

Practitioner Learning

Community

Partnerships are created with agencies from designated locations

The first phase will launch the Project in select communities

Phase 1

The second phase will expand the Project Region wide

Phase 2Phase 1

The third phase will broaden & foster sustainability

Phase 3Phase 2Phase 1

Learning Community

Activities & key themes:

Goal – increase worker skills & program effectiveness

• Collaboration & sharing expertise

• Peer mentoring – build on worker assets

• Applying evaluation skills

Activities & key themes con’t

Workshops & 1:1 coaching

Integrating new skills & strategies into current practice;

Utilizing ICT tools to enhance practice & increase effectiveness

We learn from each others expertise;

Street Kids provide committed and experienced support:

Skills & resources we bring:

- Training & facilitation- Expertise & new engagement skills- Materials- Food & transportation

First Year – time commitments

Jan. – Sept. (9 months)

8 half day workshops2 hours on site coaching per month

Off site participation – 65 %On site participation – 35 %

Working together we can increase our strengths & resilience to end

youth poverty

Thank You

Street Kids International

References:

Canadian Council on Social Development: The Progress of Canada’s Children & Youth - www.ccsd.ca

Social Watch: http://www.socialwatch.org/en/fichasPais/35.html

Media Reports: Below the Line Series: (via York Region Food Network)http://www.yrfn.ca/media.htm

Youth Community Mapping Program: Street Kids International & Community Resource & Learning Room

http://halt.civiblog.org/blog

York Region Youth Summit 2001 Report

Planning For Tomorrow – Towards a Sustainable Region Presentation: York Region - http://www.region.york.on.ca/default.htm