Arete Education, Inc. trains and empowers youths to lead successful lives, by partnering with local schools and community groups to grow investment in Mott Haven Youths.

Arete Education partners with local schools and community groups to grow investment in Mott Haven yo

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Strong program engagement and impact. Measures: 1) Attendance over 80% of eligible students attend the program on an average day; 2) 50+ program alumni reengage through employment or network events.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Two: Scale our impact. Measure: 1) Secure two additional school sponsors in addition to The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Three: Healthy organization. Measures: 1) Over 60% of full- and part-time employees would recommend Arete to friends and family as a great place to work; 2) Fewer than 15% of part-time staff leave.

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

The leadership teams include the Board of Directors executive team and the Arete staff leadership team. Both teams have benefitted from the following investments over the past two years: 1) coaching focused on alignment of personal leadership to organization mission and vision; 2) emotional intelligence coaching, trainings, inventories, and leadership focus; 3) investment in creating organizational scorecard to drive goal-setting and supervision practices across the organization; and 4) participate in cross-sector communities of practice.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

We engage in strategic partnerships in Mott Haven and nationally to expand access to youth services and family resources beyond what Arete can provide. We have hired part-time researchers who have assisted with completing program evaluations and white papers to assist the Executive Director who presents at national conferences and local universities on the topics of integrating SEL and Equity education initiatives, strategic advocacy and agility for organizational leaders, and emotional intelligence capacity building. We have set up Mott Haven-based community organizing groups and provide free technical assistance and training to other CBOS and community groups in Mott Haven and across the city. We work in two communities of practice in NYC: Recovery Lab and Improvement Lab to improve and publicize best practices for youth programming. We also participate in national Community School organizations to develop and publicize best practices. We actively engage in IG, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc

In the first 6 months of the pandemic, it was an intensive effort to pour our human and financial resources to sustain our school partners, families, and student. Our flagship school partnership is in Mott Haven and happened to be the very first school building the NYC DOE closed (and reopened the next day) due to the threat of the pandemic. It was a formative and surreal experience ahead of the entire system shutting down the following week to shutter the school doors one day and tell staff families to go home only to repoen the following day to tell those same families and staff to re-enter the space in mid-March. We responded quickly, anticipating that the needs of our families who reside in the poorest congressional district in the nations, marginalized by barriers to high quality education, healthcare, employment, technology, and housing. We began sourcing and procuring chromebooks and hotspots in mid-March, redirecting all available financial assets to these efforts. We expanded our professional Zoom account to provide HIPPA compliant accounts for all school and CBO staff immediately and began offering online Zoom and Google Meet trainings for school and CBO staff to support the transition in March to entirely remote schooling and afterschool programs. Our earlier investments in SEL and emotional intelligence pilot programs for afterschool activities and staff capacity building gave us a strong foothold in March and April to stabilize our staff and families. We turned up the volume on all the emotional intelligence channels we had available and directed those staff already trained in EQ and SEL work to serve a larger group of staff, families, and students across our CBO and school partners. In those first months we also pivoted to engage individual donors and foundation partners, sensing that government money would be slower to arrive. We are now investing in training and hiring our clients and alumni to serve in leadership, teaching, and service roles.