Technical Assistance and Capacity Building

By: Sherrice Dorsey-Smith, Program and Planning Manager — Department of Children, Youth and Their Families

Collective Impact hosted their annual Summer Learning Day Kick Off at the steps of City Hall on June 20, 2018 for a day of fun and learning.

How do you ensure that children, youth and their families receive high quality services? How do you ensure that children and youth experience positive and healthy relationships and build social-emotional skills that will carry them from now until adulthood? How do you help them thrive?

Through my journey as a 15-year veteran of running Out of School Time programs, as an agency funder at the SF Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families (DCYF), and as a parent, these are some of the questions that run through my mind as I lead the development of DCYF’s Technical Assistance and Capacity Building work.

At DCYF, the answer to these questions is to invest in and build the capacity of the youth worker staff who come into contact with our children and youth each day by providing access to free professional development opportunities. We have been building up our Technical Assistance and Capacity Building work with the goal of creating a suite of offerings that meet our grantees where they are and works with them to get them where they want to be.

Two program staff members from DCYF grantees’ Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco and Mission Girls participated in the Youth Worker Bootcamp 101 facilitated by Be the Change Consulting at Precita Community Center on August 17, 2018.

Our Technical Assistance and Capacity Building program is innovative and cutting edge for a local city department. Our vision for Technical Assistance and Capacity Building is that all grantees are programmatically, fiscally, and organizationally sound at every level of the agency, from the staff to the program to the overall agency.

· For individual youth workers, we provide professional development opportunities that increase the skills and abilities needed to implement high quality youth development programming.

· On the programmatic level, our efforts focus on building the capacity and ability for programs to engage in continuous quality improvement and to support staff with their professional development.

· On the agency level, DCYF helps organizations build and strengthen their systems and infrastructure in order to provide the solid foundation required to support effective programs and staff.

DCYF’s Technical Assistance and Capacity Building Team includes Teodora Ildefonzo-Olmo, Sherrice Dorsey-Smith and Monica Flores.

DCYF has provided these unique opportunities for our grantees for the last eight years, and in that span of time we have learned what skills, tools, and resources are most helpful and effective for our grantees. We implemented intensive fiscal and operations support through our Organizational Sustainability Initiative. We created one on one coaching opportunities for individuals, programs and agencies. And our greatest accomplishment to date: the creation of DCYF University (DCYF U).

The concept for DCYF U has been on my mind for years, and last year we successfully piloted the program. DCYF U provides opportunities to dive deeper into specific content areas and allows DCYF to provide long-term professional development to both staff and participants. These opportunities will increase the knowledge and skills of staff and participants, and will equip them with the tools they need to create safe and supportive environments. DCYF U has established a wonderful partnership with San Francisco State University (SFSU) that allows us to offer three units of credit and a Youth Development Certification for participants who complete core courses and specialization requirements.

Our grantee Bay Area Community Resources’ CHALK hosted Bounce Back: the 4th Annual Power Youth Movement Conference on August 25, 2018 at Leadership High School. The conference honored young people who have “bounced back” from obstacles of oppression, trauma, and violence celebrating the resilience of youth by using their narratives as a form of resistance and empowerment.

The community-based organizations that are funded by DCYF to provide programs and services in San Francisco play a significant role in the social, cultural and economic vitality of the communities where they serve and operate. The viability of these organizations is critical for both DCYF’s goals and the overall stabilization and sustainability of the communities they serve. DCYF is deeply committed to working in partnership with our grantees to strengthen organizational capacity and continuously increase the quality of programming.

Now, imagine this…

You are a youth worker, and you are standing in the front of a classroom. You see 15 pairs of eyes looking at you, and you freeze. You begin to second-guess yourself, your skills, and your ability t o engage all these young people. They expect you to educate, or at least entertain them for the next hour. What do you do? You take a step back, breathe, and remember what you learned in the various DCYF trainings, workshops and cohorts. You remember that you got this. You have the ability and skills you need to engage the youth, create a space where you can build as a community, and foster an environment where young people can thrive, grow up, and possibly become the future Mayor of San Francisco. Your nerves begin to calm, and what seemed like an impossible task is now a cakewalk. You got this.

DCYF Grantees, check out the offerings and sign up today. Keep making San Francisco a great place to grow up.

DCYF hosted the Academic Carnival: Summer Learning Conference on April 28, 2018 at the Southeast Community Facility with Be the Change Consulting.

Written by

Making San Francisco a great place to grow up, DCYF has led the City's investments in children, youth, TAY and their families since 1991. www.dcyf.org

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