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Outreach After School Program

In 2010, the Outreach After School program took pride in partnering with several agencies, to help enrich the lives of local youth, by delivering best practice programming to the surrounding community. Our goals again targeted the idea that it “takes a village to raise a child.”

Our focus was on providing tools to help community members achieve self-sufficiency and provide our youth the resources to be successful.
This year we served 623 unduplicated and 23,885 duplicated participants. We engaged everyone with creative, educational, and recreational activities; tutoring, homework help, computer classes, and sports, as well as life-skills workshops and job training. We always structure our activities to build on academic success, life and social skills, community involvement, drug resistance, and cultural awareness.

Ever year there are many different success stories within the After School Program, this year bringing special attention to Nasro Abdirizak, who was featured in an article during the Seattle Times "Fund for the Needy" campaign, December 2010. Nasro grew up at Springwood/Birch Creek since second grade, she entered Girl Scouts as a Brownie and continued until she finished in 12th grade, while participating in Outreach. Nasro is now an adult and is working for KYFS to educate other parents and their kids about the opportunities they can receive from Girl Scouts and KYFS. The article spoke to Nasro’s ability to live among her peers, who choose to skip or drop out of school, use drugs, participate in gangs and engage in criminal activity. In spite of these living conditions, Nasro has persevered, remaining focused and motivated in school. Her hard work and diligence has resulted in graduating high school and now being employed here at KYFS while continuing her education as a medical assistant. This is one of many different success stories that Outreach provides through its best practiced programming.

All programs are provided with special thanks to many volunteer and provider partnerships, in particular King County Housing Authority, Outreach provides our community with vital tools and resources. We offer direction towards healthy and rewarding lifestyles by encouraging literacy, education, community work, health & fitness and resistance to drugs & violence.

Community Support Service Projects:

• Lake Meridian Park clean up
• Showare Center Shootout volunteers
• Downtown Kent Spring clean up
• Kids’ teaching kids how to cook their cultural food
• 2 different Park clean ups and bark spreading
• Participants participated in the Olympia Have a Heart for Kids day

Digital Connector Program
Thanks to our partnership with the One-Economy Corporation, Outreach has been able to provide 15 teenagers with training in digital literacy, financial literacy, community service, and computer technology skills. During this program teens will train 900 community members on digital literacy.

Annual Back Pack Giveaway
Our Program gave away over 200 backpacks to Kent community students.

Annual Safety Fairs
We provided three King County communities with important information on boat and bike safety, liver health, heat stroke prevention, alcohol and drug resistance, recycling, hygiene, poisons and school bus safety. Many partners provided support: Kent Police and Fire, Public Health, KSD Transportation, Healthpoint, Northwest Burn Foundation, KCHA, Liver Foundation, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and Washington Poison Control.

Job Readiness Training
In partnership with career path services, Outreach hired four part time staff members this year.

WASHINGTON VIRTUAL ACADEMIES/WASHINGTON FOR AT-RISK YOUTH (WAVAk12)
An online WA. State School we used to help some of our very Truant students gets back on track. Why do you not go to school, “because I feel stupid” is the answer I receive every time. We were tired of seeing these kids in and out of court. They felt better about themselves and they discovered they were not stupid. They attended more hours and days than they had in Upper Elementary or Middle School.

Youth Council Meeting 

• We are implementing and working on some of the goals that our Youth Council wanted to see at the sites like, Recycle and Stop Bullying at Valli Kee, Gardening and Stop Bullying at Birch Creek, Stop Bullying and kids get along better at Cascade. The Evidence Based best practice programs, Life Sills curriculum are greatly utilized to work on these areas of concern.
• Kent Police Department Youth Board part of the Drinker Driver Task Force. The goal is for youth to teach youth about avoidance of Drugs, Alcohol, and Tobacco abuse. They put on a two day conference youth driven the first Tuesday and Wednesday of December every year. Our youth learn a lot about Leadership, Planning, How to Use their Community for assistance and Peer to Peer Teaching Methods.