ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2011

Early Learning Accomplishments:

• The Getting School Ready team has been building alliances between school districts, elementary schools, early care providers, and parents to support children’s school readiness and successful transition to kindergarten. During the last school year this team partnered with nine school districts, 39 elementary schools, 1,500 early care providers and 3,500 parents, in a variety of activities to improve children’s readiness for school and ease their transition to kindergarten.
• SOAR partnered with Thrive by Five Washington and the Kent and Federal Way school districts to pilot the WaKids Kindergarten Assessment Project, which is our latest step in assuring that all children are well-prepared for kindergarten. This team has also created a guidebook for schools, communities and parents to use in assuring a smooth transition from early learning settings to school.
• The Prevention and Early Intervention Action team aims to ensure that families can access high quality, culturally competent services to help them assess their children's development and address problems as early as possible. This team has been training community liaisons from immigrant and refugee communities to promote communication and mutual understanding between their communities and the health, education and human services systems – resulting in improved access to culturally and linguistically competent services. Over the past year, community liaisons have encountered over 1,550 parents of young children.
• SOAR convenes and staffs the King County Early Learning Coalition, which meets monthly to discuss important early learning issues and provide input to early learning and policy and resource efforts at both local and state levels.

School Age Youth Accomplishments:

• The King County Youth Development Network is thriving! By providing both an online hub and in-person events, KCYDN is building a more supportive, cohesive, well-connected community of youth development staff to ensure that all young people have access to high quality programs and caring, supportive adults. Youth workers are actively posting youth events, jobs, discussions, and blogs – and the site receives over 1,100 visitors per month. Plus, the City of Seattle recently awarded the KCYDN a technology grant for upgrades and improvements!
• Pathways to Partnerships launched a website to share resources, lessons learned and practical tools to support effective partnerships between schools and community based organizations. There are numerous interviews with local practitioners about what works.
• Our Advocacy for Youth & Youth Workers team supported more than 100 students in visiting their legislators in Olympia to learn about the legislative process and emphasize the importance of youth development in our community. The team has compiled youth advocacy resources and hosts an annual training on how to use the toolkit for youth programs and youth development staff.
• The Resiliency & Valued Identities team has distributed over 1,500 Multicultural Youth Leadership Curriculum copies throughout the US and internationally, has trained more than 100 youth development professionals in implementing the curriculum. A series of webinars on the curriculum activities will soon be available.

SOAR Action Team members are turning our long term goals into action and making significant progress on our vision for King County as a place in which all children enter school prepared to reach their full potential; where schools support the learning of all students; where communities are welcoming, safe and empowering; and where various systems, organizations, and providers work in concert to ensure all children and youth succeed in school and in life.

If you’re not yet engaged with an Action Team and would like to play a role in determining strategy and implementing tactics, please contact Kyla Lackie and Mercedes Cordova Hakim.

Training & Development

In 2011, our annual Putting the Pieces Together Conference attracted more than 400 participants for over 35 workshops around the themes of Social-Emotional Learning, Engagement & Social Justice. SOAR also launched the Youth Engagement Practitioners Cadre, a dynamic professional development learning community that is cultivating the knowledge of seasoned youth engagement practitioners from across King County to promote organizational and community transformation. Additionally, we continue to train and mentor Promotores, community liaisons from bilingual/bicultural communities who are learning to advocate with and for their communities, conduct outreach and engagement programs, and provide education about the services and resources available to support families and children.

Promoting Collaboration & Convening Communities

• King County Early Learning Coalition & School-Age Implementation Team: SOAR creates working partnerships among early childhood and youth development providers, based in shared goals and a common vision. These two teams are comprised of early learning and youth development stakeholders in support of the healthy development and success of young children, school-age children and older youth.
• County-wide Policy Framework: Two high quality county-wide strategic policy documents, Early Childhood and School Readiness Action Agenda and the School Age Children and Youth Action Agenda developed with broad input from and endorsement by key community stakeholders.
• Nine action teams: Action Teams work to transform a SOAR Action Agenda goal into tactics, strategy and actions, ranging from raising public awareness, to implementing community-based projects, to impacting policy changes at the city, county and state level.  Action team members represent organizations serving children and youth, businesses, grant makers, schools, governments and faith-based groups in King County, plus parents and community leaders.

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