Bright Spots: Working Together for Children and Youth
Every day we hear a new solution, a renewed collaboration, a strengthened partnership that is meeting the moment right now. When we’re stressed, confused and exhausted, we are inspired by the people working together with great solutions.
These are the Bright Spots: the places in the landscape where problems are solved, resources are leveraged and children are thriving. The bright spots upend inequity and serve the social, emotional, academic, and health needs of children, youth, and families. They may not be perfect, but in a very imperfect world, there are bright spots where people are creating hope and smiles.
While there are great programs and school systems doing noble work in their own silos, we think the brightest spots are those where two or more partners come together. We believe that community collaboration is stronger and more sustainable in this time of disruption.
We’re reading about bright spots in the media, we’re seeing them explained in virtual events, we’re hearing of them through friends and colleagues. We keep searching for the right example at the right time. And that led us to build a database, a simple way to collect and catalog. We’re building this database — called the Bright Spots Collection — to capture initial data describing partnerships so users can get a sense of what’s out there and then do their own digging on what interests them. We think this will be valuable to practitioners, policymakers, the media, and researchers.
Partnerships are hard and messy and not frequently boasted about. We know that not every Bright Spot example will be comprehensive. We’ll work to get as many details as possible but mostly want to point people in the right direction, even if incomplete. We reveal our bias in the criteria that partnership is better; but we’re not judging the who, or how of the partnering.
Funded by the SD Bechtel Jr. Foundation, the Bright Spots Collection complements and extends the work of the Readiness Projects by offering examples of the ideas and strategies promoted by the partners.
Join us! We welcome your Bright Spots. The database will be live in a few weeks. In the meantime, we’ll feature Bright Spots in a special series on this blog. If you have one you want us to check out, leave a response below or email us at brightspots@collaborativecommunications.com.
