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Toolkit List
Toolkits for all of the four Building Blocks for Effective Change and their related standards are available below. Toolkits contain an overview of the topic and selected resources, tools and community examples.
Broader Partnerships
– from young people to professionals, from front-line providers to policymakers
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
To really change the odds for children and youth, your community needs the involvement of its influential leaders from all sectors. That includes education, business, government, nonprofits and families. “Involvement” goes beyond signing up and saying, “Call me when you want something.” These leaders need to be committed and collaborative in ways that contribute to the overarching mission of the group.
- to ensure full coverage of issues, populations and strategies
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
If your community is like most, it already has lots of partnerships in place: partnerships with their own websites, logos, mission statements and memorandums of understanding. These partnerships can be an enormous asset – if you can organize them into a coherent patchwork that meets the needs of the whole child and the whole community.
- that establishes accountability for improved outcomes from birth to young adulthood
Sunday, August 21, 2011
First, you need a conductor for your concert. With various people and organizations playing unique roles in your community – focusing on particular issues, populations and geographic areas – someone needs to keep an eye on the big picture, connect the work of those groups and make sure there are no gaps. That’s why every successful Ready by 21 state or community has an overarching leadership council.
Monday, August 15, 2011
You can’t do this alone. No person or organization can change the odds for youth by themselves. You need to work in concert with others. That means more than “let’s get together sometimes.” After all, concerts are more than just a bunch of musicians making noise at the same time (certain bands notwithstanding). Working in concert means agreeing on what to play, playing in unison and contributing your own special sound to create something beyond what any of you could do on your own.
Bigger Goals
– that includes preparation and problem-reduction in all areas of development.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Conceiving goals and indicators is easy. The challenge is getting community leaders to agree on goals and indicators that cover all young people of all age groups, in all aspects of their lives – from education and health to interpersonal skills and job readiness.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Toby Keith earned his fame in country music, but he sure showed great insight into leadership when he sang, “If you don’t know where you’re goin’, you might end up somewhere else.”
– to improve communications among joint efforts and to the general public.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Ambitious leaders with big plans sometimes give people TMI: Too Much Information. Hand out a list of indicators about child and youth outcomes, or a list of goals to develop community supports for youth, and you risk creating communications overload. Everyone stalls because they’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to focus.
- that establishes action strategies, stakeholder commitments and ongoing accountability mechanisms.
Friday, July 1, 2011
You’ve come a long way: Leaders in your community understand each other’s language, agree on goals for young people and have defined the supports that youth need to reach those goals. Now, what does everyone actually do?
- and specify high-quality standards across all systems and settings where young people spend time.
Friday, August 26, 2011
While it’s true that “it takes a village to raise a child,” this is also true: The world is full of villages where many young people are not doing well.
Better Data and Decisions
- to make strategies more effective
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
You’ll have no trouble finding strategies that call themselves “evidence-based” or “proven” to be effective. That’s what leaders want – but how do you know what approaches really work and are a good fit for your community or state?
- horizontally (across systems) and vertically (from individual and neighborhood through community and state)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
It’s time to share. After all, a new pile of statistics will just give everyone information overload. To use this tremendous resource to its full advantage, you need a way to connect data sources and exchange information among stakeholders.
- to inform collective efforts and demonstrate the link to improved outcomes
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
If your community is like most, then you know a lot about young people as students: their attendance rates, grades, test scores and the rankings of their schools. But what do you know about the majority of their lives – the time when they are not in school? Probably not as much.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
America loves statistics and seems to have one about everything: from the number of people per square mile (87) to how much the average dog owner spends on the vet each year ($248) to the odds of catching a foul in the home ballpark of the Philadelphia Phillies (one in 1,233). So where are the data you need about kids in your community?
Bolder Actions
- by increasing their quality, coordination and reach
Friday, September 2, 2011
Healthy behavior, staying in school, problem-solving skills – these are among the outcomes we all want to see in our young people. It is always encouraging to be able to point to a new mentoring initiative, a great after-school program or a really innovative school, but to achieve community- and state-wide impact, you need to do something bigger. You need to make high-quality interactions between young people and adults routine.
- to be more consistent, effective and aligned to maximize return on investments
Friday, September 2, 2011
Do you ever feel like well-intentioned people around you are working hard but, to borrow a cliché, it looks like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing? Sometimes, the left hand even holds the right hand down.
– building their capacity in the full range of action strategies
Friday, September 2, 2011
We’ve all heard youth and parents voice their opinions at public gatherings – a youth summit, a school board meeting, a protest. That’s admirable, but what changed because of their involvement?
- for improving effectiveness, scale and sustainability, and for reducing gaps in services
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
In times of funding cuts or a crisis involving youth and youth services, you can count on this: Loud voices will demand better supports for young people. That’s laudable. But demanding higher quality supports for young people should not be relegated to crises. To achieve long-term, systemic change, that demand has to become part of the norm.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Bold: Mirriam-Webster defines it as “showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous.” By following the Ready by 21 Building Blocks, you’ve seen the importance of being bigger, broader, better. That isn’t just for alliterative effect; it’s to challenge you to go one step further.