Stevens questions evaluation of Beacon community partnerships and advisory councils
Stevens asks how DYCD evaluates the quality of required community partnerships and advisory councils. Asherall explains providers leverage co-locators and community partners to bring in resources at no additional cost, with DYCD facilitating connections.
The RFE requires that each beacon program to maintain at least three community partnerships and operate advisory council.
How does the YCD evaluate the quality and effectiveness of those partnerships and are providers receiving significant resources to support that community work and engagement?
So all of our provider in the contract, yes, they have partners, but they also have co-locators.
And so the idea is to be able to leverage those resources so that it's not an additional cost to them.
So if there's a co-locator able to provide dance and they're unable to do so, that co-locator can expand their services and their reach to the participants of the beacon as well as clients that they're bringing in.
into the school.
And so the idea is to ensure that our CBOs, you know, reach out to their local organizations and communities to bring in those resources.
And how we support them is that, you know, sometimes we send them resources.
Sometimes we'll have somebody reach out to us directly.
And oftentimes we'll say,
hey, we have a potential partner that provides services in your community.
Can you meet with them?
And it's usually a win-win conversation, and the incoming smaller organization is then able to use the space at no cost to them.
And so we do it in that way where they can kind of partner on the ground.