Afterschool Provider Spotlight: Colorado “I Have a Dream” Foundation & Swallow Hill Music
To help build the capacity of Denver’s out-of-school time industry and facilitate partnerships between youth service providers, the City and County of Denver’s Office of Children’s Affairs (OCA), which serves as DAA’s lead agency, provided grants to 10 comprehensive OST organizations that offer daily youth programming. With this funding, these organizations provide mentorship assistance to content-specific OST providers, which typically focus on a single activity like sports or music.
As one of the recipients of this grant, Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation, began a mentorship relationship with Swallow Hill Music, a content-specific provider, in January 2020. Despite the impact of the pandemic, these two organizations have deepened their commitment to working together over the past 21 months.
Capacity-Building in Action
Through their collaboration, Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation and Swallow Hill Music leadership teams meet monthly. The Swallow Hill team regularly attends Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation staff meetings so the two organizations can share best practices, lessons learned, and tools for engaging youth. In addition, this peer group works together to observe programming, collect data, and analyze the information collected for continuous quality improvement.
“From the beginning of their work together, Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation and Swallow Hill understood the focus of capacity building and partnership. They embraced the coaching support as an opportunity to refine their work together and identify additional resources and trainings. Their professional and personal relationship deepened, accenting the importance of the social emotional aspects of our work together,” said Jami Powell, a DAA quality coach.
DAA Provides TA Support
To help Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation effectively mentor Swallow Hill, OCA engaged the DAA coaching staff to provide technical assistance to both organizations. The DAA provided individual monthly coaching supports and facilitated an engaging professional learning community specific to the mentorship component of the grant.
“In working to support Swallow Hill Music, I am fortunate to have my own thought partner and coach in Jami Powell. Jami is a wonderful support when it comes to pushing me to think of innovative ways to take our mentor relationship with Swallow Hill Music to the next level. Jami is open to testing out new ideas and giving authentic feedback that helps both of our organizations to grow,” shares Kim Sia from Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation.
“From the beginning of their work together, Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation and Swallow Hill understood the focus of capacity building and partnership. They embraced the coaching support as an opportunity to refine their work together and identify additional resources and trainings. Their professional and personal relationship deepened, accenting the importance of the social emotional aspects of our work together! A true success story!” said Jami Powell, a DAA quality coach.
What’s Next?
Recognizing the value of thought partnerships that are mutually beneficial, both organizations developed protocols, procedures and agreements to help them engage with each other and other organizations beyond the lifetime of the OCA grant. For example, Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation created a grant model for how to select and onboard content-specific partners that are brought into their programming, which includes an MOU with clear expectations, and it focuses on orienting content-specific partners with Colorado “I Have A Dream” Foundation’s goals, systems, and data collection procedures.
As the OST industry faces staffing shortages and funding challenges, it’s more important than ever that Denver OST providers of all types come together to learn together and support their ability to serve youth and families with high-quality programming.