King County’s Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account (PSTAA) seeks to expand equitable supports for school aged youth around the region. One of the ways we do that is through our K-12 Community-Based Supports investments that support the Racial Equity Coalition’s Love & Liberation , a partnership with United Way of King County.
The Love & Liberation pilot is made of up a range of programs and services provided by 14 BIPOC-led organizations in the Racial Equity Coalition (REC). REC works to create communities of belonging for youth of color, offering after-school and school-based programming that celebrates their cultural identities and equips them with tools to stay engaged in school. REC also uses a participatory grantmaking framework that informs how REC organizations invest resources to achieve positive results for youth of color. King County Department of Community and Human Services is pleased to share that the Love & Liberation pilot will be extended through 2026. Originally slated to end in 2023, the pilot program showed promising preliminary results and will continue on for three more years.
DCHS is looking ahead and planning the continued evaluation of the pilot that builds off the early impacts on youth. DCHS will incorporate these learnings into PSTAA’s K-12 Community-Based strategy for future investments.
Key learnings from the pilot
DCHS program staff and REC learned a lot through the pilot phase. As the program moves into its next phase, here are three areas of focus that staff and partners are reflecting on together.
- Community-based organizations are uniquely positioned to swiftly respond to youth and community needs. These organizations have strong relationships with the communities they serve, in part because they are born from, rooted in, and reflective of the community. These organizations have earned their communities’ trust and are often the first to identify urgent needs and existing resources that community members look for in a time of need.
- Strong relationships between REC organizations promote learning and decision-making within the group. They also note that developing these relationships takes time and intentionality as well as a dedicated facilitator to foster.
- REC creates a safe and stable place for BIPOC leaders to learn from, support and partner with each other. REC represents a wide variety of BIPOC-led organizations and leaders, including both newly established and long-standing organizations as well as younger leaders and seasoned leaders. Despite these differences, REC has developed a learning culture and safe space to ask questions, speak freely, share experiences and support one another. REC organizations have begun to partner with each other on trainings, sharing meeting space and referring youth and families across programs.
What’s Next
Both United Way and REC continue to reflect on the successes and challenges over the past three years. As shared in the assessment report, COVID-19 had a huge impact on staffing and coalition engagement during the pilot. This highlighted the importance of planning for sustainability and continuity in case of staff turnover, including clarifying coalition processes, creating ways to onboard new staff and documenting REC’s history as well as the path forward. In this next phase of the pilot, United Way and REC will be working on more documentation about the participatory process, which can be shared with other groups looking to replicate or learn from REC’s efforts.
United Way and REC continue to find creative ways to share their work with the community. United Way has recently launched a new podcast, Hourglass, highlighting work across their organization. REC organizations have been featured in some of the podcast episodes thus far, including episodes entitled “Mentoring for These Times” and “Love and Liberation, a Different Kind of After-School Program”. Head to the website to check out these episodes and many more!