AUTUMN 2018 UPDATE
Greetings!

The Eastside Pathways Partnership, now in our 8th year, continues to be driven towards the idea that every child deserves the chance to be happy, healthy, and successful. We are doing this by building a powerful network of community members and nearly 70 partners in East King County dedicated to working together to shape systems that best support every child, step by step, from cradle to career.

Our aim is for every child to thrive in school and in life. This includes their optimal health and positive development from birth through high school graduation with a path to post-secondary opportunities and ultimately a fulfilling career. We do this by following a proven framework, using bold, data-driven approaches to discover efficiencies, reduce gaps, break down barriers, and improve practices, policies, and services. We create better outcomes for all youth by creating better systems. 

It's an ambitious mission. The Partnership helps build the team and the pathways to achieve it, you support us financially and with volunteer expertise, and together, we can reach our goal of children thriving in our community.

We would like to share with you a sampling of our work and achievements of this year:
Pizza with a Purpose
Spearheaded by the Career Pathways collaborative, Pizza with a Purpose connected the rare opportunity for students of color to meet and connect with local business professionals of color and understand what it means to work in a particular career and what it takes to get there. We connected 14 professionals with 26 students who would not otherwise have the resource for career development advice to make more informed career choices while still in high school. We are thankful to the many individuals and partner organizations for their donated time and wisdom, and their continued support of Pizza with a Purpose this school year.  More information.
Launch of the First Hispanic/Latino-focused Organization 
and Continuation of the Promotores Project 
Recognizing the salience of community representation, Alma Gonzalez, a lead Promotor of the Eastside Pathways Promotores Projec t , convened local community members to develop a mission, vision, and set of services that resulted in the formation of NISO Programs in January 2018. With the continued support of Eastside Pathways and an advisory council, NISO carries on the important mission of lifting up the LatinX community voice on the Eastside. This ongoing partnership was showcased as a successful example of developing local community leaders through grassroots community outreach at the StriveTogether national convening in October 2018. More information on NISO Programs.
Collaboration of Schools and Mental Health Providers
Through the diligent work of the Mental Health & Wellbeing collaborative, there is now successful alignment of mental healthcare providers across Bellevue and Lake Washington school districts. With representation from both the school districts and the service providers, the collaborative developed a school-based strategy that defined agreements between schools and providers on data sharing, handoff process, and service gaps, maximized available resources based on shared service data, and examined school demographics for language and cultural matches. The result: starting this school year, youth are connected to services faster, with better handoff and communication between schools and providers.
All-Collaborative Convening
Partners from our ten collaboratives and Eastside Pathways' Board of Directors gathered in April to learn about the work progress of each collaborative, and how the work supports the cradle-to-career continuum. We welcomed the positive feedback about breaking down the silos from within, and better connection and collaboration both between the partners and across the collaboratives.  More information.
Eastside Organizations' Collective Advocacy in Fundraising
In an effort to debunk of the myth of "all are affluent" on the Eastside, Eastside Pathways and our partners gathered and jointly participated in the various funding rounds and applications. As a partnership application, we advocated funders on behalf of the Eastside community about the often-unseen needs of the Eastside. While not all applications were successful, organizations willingly and selflessly put common interests of the youth we serve in the forefront. We are excited to have jointly captured the funding needs from some funders, such as the  Trauma-Informed Restorative Practices from King County's Best Starts for Kids initiative . We look forward to more funding collaboration opportunities within our partnership.
These are but a sampling of the work of the collective partnership. From the Partnership's continued commitment to a results-driven approach to introducing the work of MESH (Mindsets, Essential Skills and Habits); from welcoming the City of Redmond as an official partner organization to having more than 25 individuals representing the Eastside Pathways Partnership at the StriveTogether national convening, we are committed to our mission. Our Eastside Pathways Partnership is strong, vibrant, and impactful because of the support, participation, volunteering, advocacy, and financial support from individuals such as yourself.

As we look to round out 2018, we thank you again for your dedication to the success of Eastside Pathways. Please reach out to me directly or to any of our partner organizations if you would like to get more involved in any way, or have any questions or feedback.

On behalf of the Eastside Pathways Partnership and its staff, we wish you a wonderful season of thanks.

Warmly,
Stephanie Cherrington
Executive Director
Eastside Pathways  is a strong community-wide partnership of more than 70 public, private, and nonprofit organizations on the Eastside that works collectively to attain better outcomes for children, cradle to career (birth to 26 years). We use the collective impact framework to work across sectors, focus on different goal areas to improve educational outcomes for children and make lasting systems change. The partnership is supported by a backbone entity that mobilizes, convenes, and facilitates its work. 
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