out-of-school time

United Way Worldwide can and should provide national leadership by working with national partners
and other interested stakeholders to sustain a national environment that helps to catalyze local action.
This includes:
Making the Case – United Way Worldwide can help make the case – within the network, external
stakeholders, and the general public – about the importance of out-of-school time as one important
strategy for cutting the dropout rate by 2018 and increasing the number of students who graduate
high school prepared for college, work, and life. United Way Worldwide can also channel our network’s
collective voice and advocate for policies that sustain public investment in out-of-school time.
• Leveraging Core Organizational Strengths to Advance the Work – United Way Worldwide
can encourage local United Ways to leverage all parts of their organizational work to
deepen their out-of-school time efforts. Volunteers can be engaged and matched with
related programs that could use more adult presence and support; local businesses and
corporate partners might be asked to lend their time, talent, and expertise to mentor
youth in out-of-school time programs, or to provide internships and career exploration
opportunities for older youth; donors might be asked to advocate for sustained public,
private, and philanthropic investment in these initiatives.
• Increasing Visibility – United Way Worldwide’s national leadership can help shine a
light on the network’s overall investment in out-of-school time and on the work that local
United Ways are already doing in out-of-school time to strengthen quality, expand access,
leverage existing resources, and improve results for participants.
• Sharing Best Practices – United Way Worldwide can continue to grow local United Way
capacity in this area by facilitating access to the latest expertise as well as support to
strengthen their own out-of-school time grant making, sustaining a learning community to
share promising practices and experiences, and developing tools and other resources.
• Strengthening Connections – United Way Worldwide can help connect our network
to existing coalitions, advocacy groups, state afterschool networks, and others who
are actively advancing this issue so that efforts at the national, state, and local levels
complement and support one another.
Ensuring that high-quality afterschool and summer learning opportunities are available to all students
who need them requires a systemic, big-picture approach that is not piecemeal or focused on individual
programs. Given the reach of our network and the relationships, partnerships, and resources United
Ways can collectively leverage, the network is well-positioned to help facilitate a systemic approach to
improving out-of-school time as part of larger strategic efforts to improve middle grades success and
increase high school graduation rates.
This work and the resulting lessons learned, would not have been possible without the investment of
jcpenney Afterschool. United Way Worldwide is pleased to have had the significant support of jcpenney
to build on these successes and deepen our work on out-of-school time.
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