MLP, like many other organizations, weathered so many different challenges over the last year amid the pandemic. However, we also formed some amazing partnerships that will allow us to expand who receives our programming. This year we applied for a grant from Kaiser Permanente to support youth workers who support youth in out of school time spaces and were excited to have this new opportunity funded!
Out of school time youth workers have such amazing chances to connect with students outside of academic spaces and really build strong relationships not only with the youth they work with, but also with the communities they work within. Many out of school time staff also come from the communities in which they work and have a deep desire to give back to their community. With this in mind we reached out to Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) who is a Bay Area heavy hitter when it comes to providing community programming. BACR provides after school programming for 67 schools in the East Bay including Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Antioch, Pittsburg, and West County.
We are so excited to announce this partnership because it means that for several of our partner schools our students will not only receive mindfulness programming during the school day, but also after school! After school staff don’t always have as many opportunities for professional development be it the cost or scheduling so we are extremely excited to begin this partnership and see how it grows! We began the partnership in June by doing a mindfulness 101 workshop with the after school leadership team and will begin training staff when they return in August.
More to come from this partnership!