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Mission Statement | |
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Organizational History | |
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Funding Support | |
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Use the links below to learn more about CNYD's story.
Mission Statement
Organizational History
Funding Support
The purpose of our organization is to shape a world where all young people thrive supported by communities that help them develop their full potential. CNYD does this by strengthening the youth development field through community capacity building and policy alignment. Our goals are to provide vibrant youth development support for young people in the Bay Area and to serve as a youth development catalyst in communities outside the Bay Area.
All of our work is youth-centered and strives for the highest possible quality. We bring a developmental approach and a community-wide perspective to everything we do.
ORGANIZATIONAL
HISTORY
The Early Years: Professional Development
for Youth Workers
CNYD is an outgrowth of a 1992 study by the Stanford University Center for the Study of Families, Children, and Youth that highlighted the significant needs of youth-serving organizations and youth workers for opportunities for professional exchange, staff development, and access to training resources. CNYD's founding director, Sue Eldredge, and an advisory group of local organizational leaders and youth workers responded to the study's recommendations by establishing a three-year demonstration project to build a professional network for youth workers in the Bay Area.
During these three years, CNYD focused on providing direct training and
professional development opportunities for youth workers in large and
small community-based organizations. CNYD staff organized peer exchange
opportunities through speaker's forums, conferences and training workshops,
focusing on creating unique and effective approaches to providing professional
development for youth workers. We coupled interactive group workshops
with follow-up support strategies to ensure that new learning was effectively
put into practice.
In 1994, CNYD organized and hosted the first Bay Area Youth Development
Conference, which over 600 professionals attended.
1994 - 2002: Working Community-wide as an Intermediary Organization
In 1994 CNYD grew from a successful demonstration project into an independent nonprofit and broadened our mission to strengthen the Bay Area youth development field as a whole. Our commitment to integrating youth development principles and practice throughout the community was put into practice on two levels:
- At the community level, we began providing youth-serving organizations
with technical assistance, training, and resources to improve programming
and strengthen the structure and capacity of the organizations themselves.
- At the systems level, we began working with policymakers and funders to ensure that outcomes and resources more effectively and consistently support community youth development efforts.
Our new role as a youth development intermediary organization, allowed us to leverage our skills and focus our efforts strategically at both policy-making and community levels.
We began forming learning communities of practitioners and organizational leaders to build consensus and commitment to effective youth development practices and real measures of the developmental impact of our programs. We worked with diverse public and private agencies providing over 2,000 Bay Area youth workers from over 600 organizations with a broad array of professional development opportunities.
During this phase of development, CNYD's focus was to translate the best of research and theory into practical tools that practitioners could use to better meet young people's needs. In partnership with researchers Dr. Jim Connell and Dr. Michelle Gambone, CNYD and local youth-serving organizations and staff created a research-based framework, assessment tools and training approaches to strengthen both youth organizations and the programs they offer. These have garnered a great deal of national attention because of their unique and effective approach.
At a broader level we began mobilizing local funders, policymakers, and communities around a common vision of youth development, and working with them to align resources to more effectively support community-based youth development efforts.
From 1995 to 2002, CNYD was the managing intermediary for the San Francisco Beacon Initiative, leading and shaping the largest youth development initiative in the Bay Area. The steering committee included the San Francisco Unified School District, the San Francisco Department of Children Youth and Their Families, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund working alongside 15 private foundations and over 144 different community- based agencies. This broad-based effort created the eight, vibrant, neighborhood centers known as Beacon Centers. CNYD played three key roles, providing: overall leadership and guidance for the Initiative and its implementation, staff support to the Beacon Steering Committee, and training resources and support to each of the Beacon Centers throughout their first five years of growth.
During these years, CNYD:
- Supported the development of eight Beacon Centers in neighborhoods
throughout San Francisco. The centers serve over 7,000 young people
and adult family members free of charge each year.
- Managed a public support campaign that led to sustainable core funding
for the sites and the Initiative.
- Designed and managed a five-year evaluation of the Initiative, which will contribute important knowledge to the field of youth development.
2003 - Our Current and Future Work
CNYD's primary focus continues to be strengthening youth development services in the Bay Area at the community, funding and policy-making levels. With twelve years of experience in the field, we have reached a stage of growth where we are deepening and expanding our work locally by engaging new audiences — school-based after school programs, community-based organizations and public youth-serving agencies — and broadening our reach to communities outside the Bay Area.
Our resources and expertise are in increasing demand as communities embrace a youth development approach. We have developed tools and processes to transfer our know-how to these communities and large youth-serving organizations. Our first formal knowledge sharing partnership began in 2001 with the San Francisco YMCA. A two-year partnership resulted in a permanent Youth Development Specialist being hired who now serves all 16 branches of the YMCA in a seven-county region. We are currently working in partnership with the Youth Service Providers Network in Sacramento, a youth development intermediary organization serving over 200 agencies in that region, and have begun working locally with the San Francisco Boys & Girls Club and its eight branches.
Building on our work with the San Francisco Beacon Initiative, CNYD launched the Community and School Partnership Initiative in 2001 to strengthen community-school partnerships and to help ensure that school-based after-school programs effectively meet young people's developmental needs. CNYD has partnered with Dr. Andrea Fletcher, Director of Program Development at the California After School Partnership, to create and deliver technical assistance through the Regional Learning Center Initiative. There are now Regional Learning Centers in each of the eleven regions throughout California, that serve as demonstration sites for quality after school programming. Collectively, these programs include 271 sites and 1962 staff members, with 36,000 students participating daily. We have also created an array of tools specific to after-school settings, including the Youth Development Guidebook and training sessions on its use. In addition, CNYD participates in several statewide implementation and technical assistance bodies as a youth development advisor to promote youth development interests in legislation and policy decisions.
CNYD is grateful for the generous investments made by the following local, statewide and national foundations throughout our history.
Academy of Educational Development (AED) Center for Youth Development and Policy Research
The California Wellness Foundation
S.H. Cowell Foundation
DeWitt Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund, Inc.
East Bay Community Foundation
The Gap Foundation
Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
Walter and Elise Haas Fund
The Luke B. Hancock Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The James Irvine Foundation
The Walter S. Johnson Foundation
The Koret Foundation
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Peninsula Community Foundation
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
The San Francisco Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation
Stuart Foundation
United Way of the Bay Area
Y & H Soda Foundation