SEED - Clients & Partners

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Our Clients & Partners

ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty)
ASTEP connects performing artists with children growing up in poverty to awaken the intense joy of creative expression. ASTEP currently has programming in South Africa , India , Florida , and New York City . SEED has functioned as an on-call coach, providing the talented leadership of this young organization with methodology and technical assistance to clarify vision, and strengthen team-building and infrastructure. SEED guided ASTEP to develop new evaluation protocols, enabling staff and volunteers to capture and share transformative results in substantive reports that are unusually dynamic and useful. ASTEP is on a path to dramatically expand and sustain its reach and depth of impact. Future funding will allow SEED to train the Broadway performers who volunteer at ASTEP to serve as SEED coaches. This will enable SEED to reach more organizations, and allow ASTEP to enrich volunteer offerings and contribute capacity-building services to its NGO partners in Africa and India .
www.asteponline.org

Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program
The Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program is dedicated to optimizing the leadership skills of early childhood administrators in order to make meaningful differences in the lives of young children and families. Two foundations and a university are partnering in a multi-year initiative, providing training and support for fellows, alumni, and peer mentors. The design team completed the SEED Diagnostic in April 2009 and then began an action planning process guided by SEED. The sponsoring team is using Seeding the Vision to stimulate future strategies.
www.du.edu/education/programs/buell/

Chicago Youth Programs (CYP)
After a first round of work with SEED that was funded by the State of Illinois in 2008, CYP pursued additional funds and was able to secure a grant from the Gap Foundation that sponsored a staff retreat, Six-Month Stretch and SEED Diagnostic in 2009. This award-winning organization was founded 25 years ago and is largely sustained by volunteers. Its mission is to improve the life opportunities and health of at-risk youth. SEED is assisting staff to improve cross-site communications and a culture of consistency, openness, respect and support across departments.
www.chicagoyouthprograms.org/

Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Policy Advocacy & Research Department
FPWA provides management assistance, capacity building, and advocacy services with 300 member agencies and churches throughout the New York City five boroughs. Its Policy Advocacy & Research Department works closely with member agencies and in numerous coalitions to influence budget and legislative outcomes that positively impact social services organizations and the children, families and individuals they serve. The department held its annual staff retreat at SEED in 2008. They used the SEED Diagnostic to gain clarity about what is working and where attention can be focused for better results. Seeding the Vision helped solidify an expanded vision. The Six Month Stretch revealed new options and approaches to advance and track the department's work on media and messaging, and with its member agency task forces.
www.fpwa.org/cgi-bin/iowa/policy/index.html

Georgia State Parent Information and Resource Center (PIRC)
PIRC aims to address poverty and illiteracy by encouraging families to realize the benefits of parental involvement and to take advantage of services available that lead to the academic success of children. The goals of this five-year federally funded initiative are to enhance the abilities of parents across the state to participate effectively in their children's education, and to improve student achievement through expanded and effective use of parental involvement programs. SEED's Six-Month Stretch methodology and the Journey Mapping evaluation tool are being used to design and evaluate the five-year growth process, as the network attempts to scale its impact from five to 150 counties with a budget that is only doubled.
www.nationalpirc.org/directory/GA.html

Division of Community Health and Prevention (CHP), under IL Dept. of Human Services
SEED began working with 70 community-based youth development agencies across Illinois, in May 2008. The SEED Diagnostic was conducted with all 70 agencies working in areas of teen leadership, college prep, and after school education to identify strengths and growth areas in their work. An aggregate analysis was produced to give the Division a much clearer sense of what is happening and what is needed to improve organizational performance and impacts across the State. Under the same $200,000 contract, SEED also engaged seven promising agencies to enrich their creativity, accountability and effectiveness through use of the Six-Month Stretch. These agencies all showed dramatic progress over six months of monthly Intention Tracking with SEED: Alternatives, Inc, Chicago Youth Programs, Center for Family Services, Erie Neighborhood House, Patriots Gateway Center, Ray of Hope Center of the Arts, and United Neighborhood Organization. The entire project was carefully documented and assessed as a model for SEED to potentially reach many more community-based agencies via third-party government funding in the future.
www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=31754

LEAP (Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership, Inc.)
LEAP is a youth development and educational enrichment program based in New Haven, CT, with a mission to develop young leaders (ages 7-23) to achieve positive academic and social outcomes training and mentoring children living in high poverty urban neighborhoods. LEAP is an AmeriCorps Program. Sponsored by the Starfish Group, LEAP made use of the SEED Diagnostic, a half-day "creative stretch" workshop and ongoing assistance with evaluation in 2008, to expand its Leaders-in-Training Program (LIT). The program succeeded in doubling the number of the middle and early-high school aged participants.
www.leapforkids.org

Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA)
The central office of PHEA, based at New York University, applied the Six-Month Stretch to maximize the value of collaboration among the partners, with SEED providing additional, specialized meeting design and facilitation. PHEA was created in 2000 to further the development of higher education in Africa. Current foundation partners include The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Kresge Foundation.
www.foundation-partnership.org/index.php

Socorro Latino
Socorro Latino is an organization emerging to promote healthcare awareness and collaboration among agencies providing chronic disease prevention services for Illinois Latino communities. Walking alongside the Socorro management team, SEED provides program design, strategic guidance, diagnostic, assessment and reporting tools to guide and sustain the project. SEED is facilitating dialogue to assist formation of three working groups, assisting agencies to develop shared visions, motivation, collaborative strategies, leadership and outcomes. SEED is also offering capacity-building for the 60 agencies in the Socorro network, gathering data, and providing timely feedback to the new alliances, so that they may track and build momentum in their new initiatives.
www.youthnetworkcouncil.org/program-managment.asp

Summer Search
Summer Search is a national leadership development program that operates out of seven cities, providing long-term counseling, mentoring, and outdoor summer education experiences to low income high school students. Starting sophomore year, more than 700 students annually take part in weekly mentoring and personal growth opportunities aimed at preparing for college and becoming responsible and altruistic leaders. Thanks to generous support of the Starfish Group, 20 national senior management and executive staff engaged in a Six-Month Stretch to "think nationally, act locally" and improve outcome reporting. The leadership team intends to conduct the SEED Diagnostic twice each year to regroup, capture progress and set direction.
www.summersearch.org

Trinity Boston Foundation
Trinity Boston Foundation is a subsidiary of Trinity Church and home for two programs that began working with SEED in 2007: Trinity Boston Counseling Center (TBCC) offers mental health services for caregivers and clergy, as well as community members without health insurance. Trinity Excellence for Education Program (TEEP) is a model youth leadership program, serving middle school students through an intensive summer school/day camp and after-school programs. TEEP provides high school students with year-round leadership development, preparing them, in turn, to lead middle school programs. Both projects have used the Six-Month Stretch and Journey Mapping to sharpen their focus and capture outcomes, contributing hope, healing and community to Boston. In 2008, SEED also guided TBF to establish new evaluation protocols. This has enabled them to report transformative results in substantive reports that are unusually dynamic and lively. The overall aim at TBF is to partner and extend ownership of these programs within and beyond the walls of the Trinity Boston Foundation.
www.trinityinspires.org

Sustainable Tucson
Sustainable Tucson is a citizen-driven initiative committed to building regional resilience and sustainability. A core team of veteran and newer members first used "Seeding the Vision" to share views and reach common ground around expectations. Next they found the SEED Diagnostic especially helpful to clarify priorities and launch action plans. Their work with SEED has launched these efforts: 1) a production team is engaging diverse community resources to tell collectively the unfolding story of Tucson�s journey to sustainability; 2) Cultivation meetings are underway with 25 local groups exploring win-win strategic partnership opportunities; and 3) Prominent residents are being recruited to serve as champions for the initiative. Something had been needed to focus the energies and big visions of this sprawling informal network. SEED provided that catalyst.
www.sustainabletucson.org

CURRENT JOURNEY MAPPING SUBSCRIBERS

This unique, on-line tool encourages participants to log on to a secure site and record key data, while reflecting on their work. Rich numeric and narrative data are generated.

Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program, Denver, CO
Twenty fellows each year are being prepared to be leaders in early childhood development programming in the State of Colorado. They maintain journals where they reflect and share their experiences during their year-long fellowship related to coursework and their home organizations.

Chicago Area Project, Youth Development Practitioners, Chicago, IL
Youth workers and program administrators in the Chicago Metropolitan Area who are interested in career advancement are encouraged to participate in a five-month certification program. As an integral part of this program, they maintain journals where they share program experiences and personal and professional growth and rate their skill mastery progress. Started in 2002, ten basic and four advanced classes have been conducted so far (with around 30 participants per class). Two new ones are scheduled to begin in 2009.

Clayton Early Learning Institute, Denver, CO
Professional coaching is being used to increase capacity of Colorado programs to provide high quality early childhood education services to children and families. The coaching relationship encourages a spirit of inquiry and intentionality, supporting programs to integrate continuous quality improvement into their culture. The coaches from Clayton maintain journals on each program and perform regular updates following coaching sessions.

Columbia College, Chicago, IL
Two programs of this Chicago-based institute are using Journey Mapping. "Arts in Youth in Community Development" is using the application to allow students working on community-based arts projects to capture and reflect on their experiences. Their mentors log on separately to reflect on student progress. The "Urban Missions Program" is using a similar application to capture service learning experiences of students and to also receive feedback on the program from community leaders who are providing these service learning opportunities.

Families Together in New York State, Albany, NY
This parent-run organization of families with children with disabilities will be using Journey Mapping to produce consistent performance data across all the programs in the five regions within the State of New York. Testing is now being conducted of an on-line, reporting scheme. Training has been completed on the use of the system for the programs in the Western Region of the state.

Hispanic Scholarship Fund Peer Counseling Program
Mentors at three universities are maintaining journals to chart their work with Hispanic high school and junior college students. The aim is to support them to successfully gain admission to four year colleges, to adopt to college life, and be successful as college students.

Passage Theater, Trenton, NJ
This community-focused theater works with young people to write and produce culturally relevant theater offerings. The director of the program and adult mentors maintain journals where they reflect on student growth and experiences and rate their skill development.

Pathways to Prevention, Queensland, Australia
"Pathways to Prevention" is an extensive curriculum developed in Australia for working with high-risk youth who are likely to follow criminal paths or engage in violent behavior without timely intervention. The project leader in Queensland is testing the usefulness of Journey Mapping for tracking work with targeted families. The heroic journey framework is being used in association with narrative accounts of family progress.

Shreveport-Bosier Community Development, Shreveport, LA
This award-winning, community renewal program aims to bring healthy life back into some of the worse areas of Shreveport (high crime, drug use, deteriorating housing, etc.). They are using a unique, evangelism model that centers on planting themselves within these communities and raising hope and spirit while providing opportunities for the youth of these areas. Journey Mapping has been used for several years by the community activist who moves into that area with her/his family to capture progress in transforming the neighborhood.

The 52nd Street Project, New York, NY
This is an after-school homework help and mentoring program. The staff person responsible for the program maintains active journals on all children participating in the program and charts their skill development.

Tri-Health, Parish Nursing, Cincinnati, OH
This is the original and still running Journey Mapping application. A team of parish nurses keep track of all the events they conduct in the Greater Cincinnati area. They write short descriptions and rate the success of the event using pre-set criteria.

UNC Faculty Engaged Scholars Program, Chapel Hill, NC
New cohorts of university faculty participate each academic year in this unique institute to hone and improve their skills to engage themselves and their students in community service projects. They maintain journals, where they reflect on institute-related experiences and associated applications of their academic fields to community projects.

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