Children & Youth

The Jewish Student Union (JSU) is a national organization that aims to enhance the Jewish identity of Jewish teens in public high schools in the United States. JSU’s program model achieves this goal by creating an engaging and appropriate in-school educational experience that is delivered by program coordinators to Jewish teens in public schools.

BTW is currently working with three national and regional funders to assess the program and organizational growth of JSU’s staffed program model, focusing on its existing program in Chicago and expansion to public schools in Denver, South Florida, and Westchester/Connecticut. The first stage of this work was the development of a theory of change that describes JSU’s purpose, strategies and outcomes and serves as a framework for the program’s evaluation.

HIRE LA’s Youth, a division of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, prepares youth to earn and retain entry-level employment. Their multi-step Work Readiness Certification (WRC) process helps youth improve their resumes and job skills and includes a job application process and mock interview with real employers.

HIRE LA’s Youth asked BTW to assess the impact of a WRC certificate on job attainment for youth. We surveyed nearly 2,000 WRC participants about their employment history and demographics, as well as their ideas on how HIRE LA’s Youth could better support youth employment.

The evaluation findings support HIRE LA’s Youth’s hypothesis that early exposure to labor market experiences can lead to increased educational and earnings attainment.

New Door Ventures (NDV) helps youth living in high-risk situations to prepare for work and life through job training and community building. NDV wanted to better understand the impact of its work, and called in BTW to assess the program’s current and future strategies.

BTW worked with NDV to articulate a theory of change. We developed a system—carefully tailored to NDV’s capacity—that the organization could use to measure outcomes and impact. At the end of the three-phase process, BTW had equipped NDV with strategies for self-evaluation:

• A clear road map for charting change
• Rigorous but achievable evaluation plans
• Skills and tools to implement ongoing evaluation, using the Efforts-to-Outcomes software by Social Solutions

J-Serve, a national day of service for Jewish teens, has increased the number of volunteer participants exponentially in its five years of operation. As the program matured, its funders wanted to better understand J-Serve’s impact and make any program adjustments necessary for future expansion and success. BTW came in to evaluate the situation.

We designed an innovative online survey, asking teen participants how the J-Serve experience affected their understanding of Jewish identity and service. We interviewed national Jewish youth organizations and funders, to establish a picture of other organizations’ experiences and impact.

As a result of the evaluation, BTW was able to provide a comprehensive overview of J-Serve and make recommendations for programmatic improvements.

The Respect for All Project: Preventing Prejudice Through Films and Training is a project of GroundSpark. The Project provides diversity training in schools through educational videos.

BTW worked for several years to assess the process and progress of the Project. We helped evaluate the impact of its first release, That’s a Family!, and used case studies to assess school-wide implementation of Respect for All’s Let’s Get Real project.

GroundSpark continues to build on BTW’s early guidance. It uses the tools and recommendations we developed to continuously improve its programs. As it expands its educational media offerings and refines the accompanying academic guides, GroundSpark is reaching audiences more effectively.

The After-school and Summer Enrichment Sub-program of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation helps build a sustainable system that provides better programmatic and financial support for California’s after-school and summer programs.

Having supported field efforts since 2005, the Foundation wanted to conduct a multi-year evaluation to learn whether its contributions are resulting in lasting improvements.

BTW published a five-part report in Fall 2009, describing how the Foundation’s efforts have built critical infrastructure components for the field. This and subsequent reports will help the field understand its accomplishments in technical assistance, workforce development and leadership for summer enrichment and after-school programs.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation sought to create a nationwide model to engage more young people in service learning as part of their academic life. BTW advised the Foundation on the development and implementation of Learning in Deed, a four-year, $13.5 million initiative.

This complex model included a number of components:

• A policy-and-practice element
• A national commission on service learning
• Research networks
• Leadership networks

BTW played a critical role in framing this initiative. Learning in Deed went on to build capacity to advocate for service learning as a K–12 teaching strategy across the country, and established a service-learning research database at the University of Indiana.