Producing Newsletters for New Literates

This manual provides detailed information on one method for creating local literacy materials. It is based on the author\u27s experience producing newsletters and learner-generated materials in Bangladesh. This manual is designed to help you create a newsletter with and for the new literates served by your literacy program. Step-by-step guidelines explain the process of publishing a newsletter including how to organize facilitators, learners and new literates to collect local news stories, how to edit, do a layout, and publish a local newsletter. The manual is designed for literacy and nonformal education practitioners who want to provide graduates of their literacy classes with interesting and relevant reading materials. Newsletter production requires creative planning. This manual is meant to be a framework to guide you through process of creating a newsletter. Begin by reading through the manual and think about how you can apply the to your work situation. The activities will make more sense after you have tried them out. The manual is divided into five activities, each of which provides you with guidelines for developing your newsletter. The five activities are: planning assessment, writing, putting it together, and distribution and feedback

Splendid Isolation: VA’s Failure to Provide Due Process Protections and Access to Justice to Veterans and Their Caregivers

Imagine you are a spouse and caregiver of a severely injured post-9/11 veteran. Your spouse served in the Marine Corps, with several deployments to Iraq. During their last deployment, your spouse sustained a severe traumatic brain injury and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Due to these injuries, they need consistent care throughout the day. Thankfully, upon their return, the VA provided a caregiver program that allowed you to step away from your job and focus on caring for your spouse full time. As part of this program, you received a caregiver stipend of $2,400 per month, healthcare, and support from the local VA Caregiver Program. During your fourth annual assessment, a field examiner evaluated your spouse and indicated that “no change has been noted from the previous year.” Two months later, you receive a letter that simply states that your spouse, for whom you were caring, has improved, is no longer severely injured, and is no longer eligible for the program. There is no medical evidence or reasoning cited. To make it worse, this letter is from someone you know well, the caregiver support coordinator at your local VA Medical Center. This caregiver support coordinator has been coordinating your medical care, fielding your questions about how to best care for your spouse, and supporting you throughout this process. As of the letter, the stipend upon which you and your spouse have relied will stop. As the caregiver, you will no longer have access to VA health care, mental health care through VA providers, or the ability to obtain respite care. Without any other indication, you find that you will no longer receive the monthly stipend to subsidize the care that you are providing to your spouse, which impacts your ability to work. You have no right to a hearing to explain the daily care you provide to your veteran spouse. In fact, your voice was never heard. You now must decide how to move forward with this loss of income, healthcare, and support—while continuing to provide the caregiving necessary for your spouse. This Article explores the VA Caregiver Program and lack of due process rights afforded to veterans and their caregivers. Congress enacted transformational legislation to support post-9/11 Veterans by supporting their caregivers in 2010. Although the program was progressive in theory, in practice, the VA’s implementation was anything but. In 2017, it became apparent that the VA Caregiver Program was purging its rolls of veterans and their caregivers. In order to stop the VA from arbitrarily kicking veterans out of its program, Congress or the VA must institute due process protections. This Article proposes five changes the government should make to the VA Caregiver Program to give veterans and their caregivers proper due process protections, including the right to: (1) an impartial adjudicator; (2) a hearing; (3) an impartial expert; (4) an adequate decision; and finally, (5) judicial review

Afterschool Matters Spring 2011

In this issue: Networks Analysis of a Regional Ecosystem of Afterschool ProgramsBy Martha G. Russell and Marc A. SmithSocial network analysis of a local afterschool ecosystem reveals programs’ relative isolation from one another and their dependence on just a few funding sources. 11 pages. Building an Afterschool Workforce: Regulations and BeyondBy Patricia ColeIf afterschool is to become a system at the program level and a profession at the staff level, we need to examine what qualifications are appropriate for the staff who make a difference in children’s lives. 10 pages. The Effect of Afterschool Program Participation on English Language AcquisitionBy Rebecca London, Oded Gurantz, and Jon NormanAn innovative data source that tracks students across school and non-school settings provides insights about how afterschool participation may improve students’ English language abilities. 8 pages. Self-Assessment of High-Quality Academic Enrichment PracticesBy Jenell Holstead and Mindy Hightower KingSelf-assessment can be a powerful tool for evaluating program quality, yet the available self-assessment instruments do not comprehensively address practices that promote academic enrichment. 8 pages. Don’t You Want to Do Better? Implementing a Goal-setting Intervention in an Afterschool ProgramBy Amy Hallenbeck and David FlemingThe ability to set and work toward goals is not inborn. This study examines how an afterschool program worked to help elementary-age children learn goal-setting strategies. 11 pages. Growing Boys: Implementing a Boys’ Empowerment Group in an Afterschool ProgramBy Georgia Hall, Ph.D. and Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D.Single-sex empowerment groups can help boys from disadvantaged backgrounds make healthy choices. What qualities does an adult leader need to facilitate boys’ empowerment? 3 pages. Book Review: Science in the Making at the Marginby Rahm, JreneReviewed by Sara Hill2 pages.https://repository.wellesley.edu/afterschoolmatters/1021/thumbnail.jp

Little (PSBA) GTO : 10 steps to promoting science-based approaches (PSBA) to teen pregnancy prevention using getting to outcomes (GTO) : a summary

All of us working for teen pregnancy prevention want to know: Are we making a difference? We want to achieve outcomes regardless of whether we are working at the school, neighborhood, community or state level. In fact, outcomes, results, impacts and accountability represent a common language that is part of the prevention landscape in any arena. Whether our focus is to prevent substance abuse, AIDS, heart disease, or unintentional injuries\ue2\u20ac\u201dwe need to reach outcomes, not only to be funded and stay funded, but most importantly, to make a difference. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to improving the health of the nation and promoting prevention. Thus, this manual represents an effort to help teen pregnancy prevention practitioners use a science- based approach to how they set goals, consider and plan for a prevention program, develop and conduct process and outcome program evaluation, and learn how to improve and sustain the program if it is reaching its intended outcomes.In the field of teen pregnancy prevention many effective prevention programs are available but adoption of these programs is slow or inconsistent at the community level. Knowing about science- based programs is necessary, but knowledge alone is not enough to achieve outcomes. If you are in the everyday world of putting programs into place, you have probably heard that you should do the following: a needs and resource assessment, have clear goals and objectives, use science-based practices, be culturally competent, build your capacity to do prevention well, have high quality plans, implement your plan and do a process and outcome evaluation, continually improve your work, and sustain your grant funded work. These are essential ingredients for effective prevention.However, the question remains: How can you connect all of these in your work? This booklet provides a summary of the Promoting Science Based Approaches-Getting To Outcomes (PSBA-GTO) model that puts all of these steps together with the knowledge base of teen pregnancy prevention in one user-friendly package. PSBA-GTO offers a clear and accessible process for local practitioners to follow for delivering teen pregnancy prevention programs using a systematic and science-based approach to their work.Little (PSBA) GTO was adapted from Wiseman S, Chinman M, Ebener P, Hunter S, Imm P, Wandersman A (2007). Getting to Outcomes: 10 Steps for Achieving Results-Based Accountability. No. TR-TR101/2. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.This document was supported, in part, by Manila Consulting Group, Inc., under Contract Number 200-2006-16591 (Task Order #002) with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the U.S. government.200-2006-16591, Task Order #00

Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits are Doing and How Foundations Can Help

For foundation leaders to most effectively support grantees, more needs to be understood about the extent to which nonprofits are assessing performance, how they are approaching this work, and what they are looking for from their funders to support it.To better understand the state of practice of performance assessment at nonprofits, The Center For Effective Philanthropy (CEP) turned to its national panel of nonprofit leaders with questions about their assessment strategies and how they are supported. For nonprofits, measuring and improving performance is a challenging endeavor. Yet, the data from these surveys reveal that nonprofits are assessing performance -- but lack the resources they need to do all they seek to do.The report shows that most nonprofits receiving funding from large foundations collect and use information about their performance, yet many want to gather additional -- or better -- data. The typical nonprofit in the study allocates just two percent or less of its budget to assessing its performance, and few employ staff who are dedicated to this work full time. In approaching this work, only a minority of nonprofits in the study report receiving support from foundations for their performance assessment efforts

Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies for Afterschool Leaders

This guide is intended to help cities strengthen and sustain quality afterschool programs by using an emerging practice known as a quality improvement system (QIS). The guide explains how to start building a QIS or how to further develop existing efforts and features case studies of six communities' QIS

Deeper Capacity Building for Greater Impact: Designing a Long-Term Initiative to Strengthen a Set of Nonprofit Organizations

Offers advice about how to plan, implement, and evaluate long-term, capacity-building initiatives -- sustained efforts to help a select group of nonprofit grantees reach a new level of effectiveness

Beyond Financial Aid: How Colleges Can Strengthen the Financial Stability of Low-income Students and Improve Student Outcomes

Completing education beyond high school is essential to Americans' well-being and economic success. But rising costs and inadequate financial resources hinder too many students from earning postsecondary credentials. This guidebook identifies six key strategies for improving services for low-income students. The report showcases promising approaches that colleges and universities are already employing, and offers these ideas as guides for all institutions. It also features an institutional self-assessment designed to help postsecondary institutions determine their effectiveness in serving low-income students and take steps toward improving their practices

A Multiple Measures Model for Documenting Teacher and Program Effectiveness

One of the most difficult challenges facing teacher educators is evaluating the knowledge, skills, and attributes necessary for professional growth and responsibility for teaching. Currently two viewpoints for preparing highly qualified teachers seem to be influencing policy. One view represented by Darling-Hammond’s research (1999), suggests that regulation of teacher education, state licensing, professional accountability, and compensation are important factors for strengthening teacher quality. A second view, offered by Chester Finn from research completed by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (cited in Berry, Hoke, and Hirsch, 2004), emphasizes less prescriptive paths such as alternative certification practices and aptitude testing to attract more qualified candidates to the profession. What seems to be established is that competent teachers are essential to the learning process. Sanders and Rivers (1998) found that effective teachers directly and positively impact the quality of teaching and, more importantly, student learning in classrooms. As a result, the stakes are high for students; their learning may be directly enhanced or damaged by the quality and effectiveness of their teachers’ practices. [excerpt

Alaska Native Technical Assistance and Resource Center: Final Report

Too often, federal and state justice programs directed at rural, predominately Alaska Native villages do not sufficiently coordinate planning and funding, and are not tailored to fit local cultures and needs. The language and institutional contexts of granting agencies and requests for proposals for grants frame justice problems and their solutions in ways that may or may not relate to the experiences of Alaska Native villages. The Alaska Native Technical Resource Center (ANTARC) was designed as a three-year project to improve village capacity to identify problems and educate the university and granting agencies about the nature of their justice problems and the resources needed to implement solutions. The initial group involved the Justice Center and four rural communities — Gulkana, Kotlik, Wainwright, and Yakutat — with representatives from the communities chosen by village leaders. This report examines ANTARC's evolution, considers its implementation, evaluates the results, and presents recommendations for promoting effective change in Alaska Native villages.Bureau of Justice Assistance, United States Department of Justice Award No. 1999-LB-VX-002Introduction / The Evolution of Antarc / Structure of the Project / Implementation / Evaluating Results / Concluding Recommendations / References / Appendix 1: Proceedings of the March 1999 Antarc Workshop / Appendix 2: Proceedings of the November 1999 Antarc Workshop / Appendix 3: Capra Training Materials / Appendix 4: Evaluation Training Workshop Material