Category: Stories

Doubling the numbers—exponential growth in participation and retention for the afterschool center at the Salvation Army Seattle in White Center

By Sierra Wagner

Washington is ranked 25th hungriest state in the nation with 1 in 5 kids in our state living in a household that struggles to put food on the table. Food insecurity refers to households that lack available financial resources for food or may have to make trade-offs between basic needs and buying adequate nutritious food. Hunger can create obstacles to learning and growing. Afterschool and summer meals are a critical component of keeping children and youth all across our state full, healthy, and ready to learn. During their time at the After School Center, youth receive supper, homework help (math, spelling, reading), activities, … [ ]

Bureau of Fearless Ideas is strengthening intentional social-emotional learning practices

School has let out, and for youth attending the Bureau of Fearless Ideas (BFI) in Seattle, they enter their afterschool program in style: teleporting. A nonprofit writing and communication center, BFI draws youth from all over the city with an office in the Greenwood neighborhood and a more recently opened space at Yesler Terrace.  The Greenwood space is co-located with the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co., a store selling the “finest space travel supplies” including a variety of games, and other fun materials whose sales support BFI’s services.     As youth arrive at BFI’s Greenwood space, they walk through the store and enter … [ ]

Newport students keep ‘active minds’ during the summer of STEM

By Ready WA

Check out this great blog post written by our partners at Ready WA featuring one of our Feed Your Brain grantees in Newport!  Ready WA is a statewide coalition that believes every Washington student should graduate high school prepared for a successful future, on the education and career path they choose. The recipe for summer learning in Newport, Wash., looks like one part science lab, one part reading room, and two parts fun. The 80 students participating in The Summer of STEM program are building roller coasters, creating cars out of pasta, engineering popsicle stick bridges, constructing elaborate towers for marbles to run through, … [ ]

How we celebrated Summer Learning Day

By School's Out Washington

In honor of National Summer Learning Day, a team of SOWA staff joined State Representative Shelley Kloba from the 1st District, Megan McJennett from King County, and Ken Nsimbi from King County Housing Authority (KCHA) on July 12 to visit Best Starts for Kids-funded programs in action at Southwest Youth and Family Services’ (SWYFS) New Futures program.  One of hundreds of celebrations across the country, we saw firsthand the positive impact of high-quality summer learning in engaging youth in building new skills, discovering passions, and connecting with caring adults. Our team of visitors observed some incredible activities run by Place-Based Collaborative partners SWYFS, Geeking Out Kids of Color (GOKiC), and Arts … [ ]

Spokane’s YMCA Program at Meadow Ridge embraces new quality practices

Located just north of Spokane, the community of Mead is home to Meadow Ridge Elementary School where the YMCA of the Inland Northwest provides licensed school-age care before and after school for children in kindergarten through 6th grade. Earlier in the school year, the program underwent a transformative 10-week intensive quality improvement process. Already experiencing major transitions with moving their program to a new location in the school and bringing on new staff, at first, the prospect of being involved in a quality improvement intervention was met with uncertainty.  Now several months later, the team working on the program at Meadow Ridge has fully embraced and incorporated many elements of the quality supports and have seen … [ ]

Skagit Community Embraces Summer Learning Program

By School's Out Washington

If you had gone to the campus of Mount Vernon’s Skagit Valley College in the first weeks of summer, you would have seen that even though school was over, the learning was not. When SOWA visited on July 18th, we came upon a cacophonous room full of school-age children banging on drums while a smiling teaching artist in the center helped them keep the beat. In another room, the middle- and high-school-aged students were in the middle of a STEM activity, learning about the environment and engineering by building model structures with ‘green roofs’ that absorb rainwater into growing plants … [ ]