June 2020

Centering Racial Equity During Dramatic Times – And Always

Black Lives Matter 

Eastside Pathways Accepted Into StriveTogether Community Engagement Fellowship

Eastside Pathways News
-- Social/Emotional Learning (SEL) Grant Extended

-- EELF Providers’ Council Meeting

-- Eastside Pathways Invited to join “Collaborative Action for Results” Series

Upcoming Event
Centering Racial Equity During Dramatic Times – And Always
Much has changed over the past month. And much has remained the same. In answer to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Eastside Pathways has held virtual meetings with community stakeholders and the Eastside Pathways Partnership since mid-March (attended by more than 150 individuals and 64 organizations) to ensure equity is at the center of local responses.

At first, these meetings were of a technical nature, connecting needs and resources within East King County. After this initial phase, the meetings shifted to focus more on longer-term outcomes and how to center racial equity within the systems represented in these virtual convenings. To do this effectively within the Eastside Pathways framework of Collective Impact, and in recognition of the elongated timeframe, the online forum shifted format to become a Collaborative Action Network, or CAN.

Based on feedback from attendees, five working groups were established around identified needs: food, housing, remote learning & living, funding, and emotional/social wellbeing. 

During the ongoing weekly calls, each working group meets in a breakout session to review progress. After identifying the key factors affecting outcomes both positively and negatively, the groups will eventually develop strategies and tactics to address these factors. The work is ongoing, and lifting up the voices of affected focus populations is a guiding principle.
Black Lives Matter 
During the protests and outcry sparked by the death of George Floyd, the June 2 regularly scheduled COVID-19 CAN call took an appropriate pause to allow members to discuss, relate, share, and process the sad and extraordinary events unfolding in real time.

Eastside Pathways continues to center racial equity as part of our ongoing work. Providing the framework to allow community leaders and stakeholders to identify systemic racism and change policies and, most importantly, the mental models, which perpetuate inequities for children is the mission of our organization.
During the call, many powerful feelings were shared and voices heard. View the video to hear Helena Stephens, co-chair of the Eastside Pathways Racial Equity Council, who provided some thought-provoking insights and a call to action.
Eastside Pathways Accepted Into StriveTogether Community Engagement Fellowship
Kalika Curry, Eastside Pathways Community Impact Manager, was selected to be part of StriveTogether’s Co-development of Solutions Fellowship for 2020. This group of facilitators from across the country will be working together to focus on understanding and improving community engagement, expanding leadership practices, and deepening our understanding of collective impact towards more equitable outcomes.

Locally, Eastside Pathways is moving this idea into action by creating a space for racial healing for people of color, as well as enlisting leaders of color from our community to be storytellers around what current community engagement looks like and how we can improve on the current state.
The Fellowship meets regularly through virtual convenings through February of next year.
Eastside Pathways News
Social/Emotional Learning (SEL) Grant Extended

As part of a special Social/Emotional Learning grant, Eastside Pathways continues to convene stakeholders including in and out of school providers, youth, and families on an ongoing basis. The output of these efforts is to collaboratively build a framework to establish best practices (a Benchmark of Quality ) centered around supporting the social emotional wellbeing of high schoolers that in and out of school providers can use with new and existing programs.

The work is underwritten by a grant that was initially intended to run through this October. Due to issues affecting the work related to COVID-19, the grant has been extended through August of 2021.

Leaders of the work, including Eastside Pathways Data Officer Payton Richardson and Community Impact Manager Sandy Nathan, as well as Associate Professor Angel Fettig of the University of Washington’s College of Education, are using the additional time to help build the Benchmark of Quality with deeper intentionality. To that end they have created a smaller working group of providers tasked with ensuring lived experience and multiple perspectives are included into each section of the final product.
EELF Providers’ Council Meeting
The Eastside Early Learning Facilitators, or EELF for short, is a project whose work is shared between Eastside Pathways, NISO Programs Promotores, and other members of the community and is focused on serving Latino families with young children (prenatal to five) to prepare them for success in school.
On June 17, a core group of providers from East King County who deliver services to this community ranging from Health, Education, Basic Needs to Parent-Child support met virtually as a part of the Providers Council to review recent feedback data from Latino families served by this project and to begin to develop solutions to address the challenges, barriers, and opportunities uncovered through data and collaborative discussion.
An essential part of the Council is co-designing and co-developing community-driven effective strategies. A big thank you to the providers participating in the Council, Alma Gonzalez of NISO and her team of facilitators who are facilitated on an ongoing basis to move this mutual work forward by Sandy Nathan, Eastside Pathways Community Impact Manager.
Eastside Pathways Invited to join “Collaborative Action for Results” Series
After a competitive application process, Eastside Pathways was selected by StriveTogether, the national Collective Impact umbrella organization to which Eastside Pathways belongs, to join a course of work to improve how we can best apply collaborative action for results.
Featuring StriveTogether networks from across the country, the goal of the program is to ground and improve collaborative action best practices at the local level in all aspects of a Partnership’s efforts including communications, data, and working groups. Collaborating with the wider community effectively and collaboratively will greatly aid real, sustained changes.
“I’m excited about this program’s ability to allow Eastside Pathways to dive deeply into specific, actionable areas to learn how to collaborate even more effectively within our Partnership, as well as the broader community, in order to drive results,” said Payton Richardson, Eastside Pathways data officer.
The group has met once and is scheduled to continue to meet virtually through November of this year. Representing the Eastside Pathways Backbone in this series are Data Officer Payton Richardson, Community Impact Manager Sandy Nathan, and on behalf of the Eastside Pathways Partnership, Gloria Henderson.
Upcoming Event
EP 101s are back!

Eastside Pathways held its first virtual Eastside Pathways 101 on May 22. The response was positive and we will continue to provide future online opportunities. The next scheduled is Friday, July 24 at 9 AM.

These events are designed to provide an overview of collective impact and the work we’re doing within the Eastside Pathways Partnership. Attendees are new executives, individuals at existing partner organizations, or any new organization interested in joining the Partnership, as well as community members.

If you know of someone, within your organization or not, who might like to learn more, registration links may be found here.
Giving every child the opportunity to thrive from cradle to career requires dedication and teamwork. That’s why Eastside Pathways helps individuals and organizations collaborate to focus their efforts, find efficiencies and increase their impact. Together, using a proven framework and data-driven strategies, we create better outcomes for our youth. 
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