Session 7: The Road to Sustainability
What is it?
Sustainability is a system of strategic thinking and effective action designed to institutionalize supportive practices and to secure the range of resources needed to achieve specific results. Too often stakeholders perceive sustainability to be solely about finances and fundraising. They do not pay enough attention to other key elements, such as constituency-building, advocacy, public relations, and human resources. As applied to community schools, sustainability is a system of strategic thinking and effective action designed to institutionalize supportive practices and to secure the range of resources needed to accomplish desired results in promoting the well-being of children, families, and communities.
Sustainability is a system of strategic thinking and effective action designed:
· To institutionalize supportive school and CBO partnership practices.
· For the partners to secure the range of resources needed to accomplish the desired results of promoting children’s learning and development by strengthening their key webs of support (schools, families, and communities).
Session 7’s primary objectives were for participants to be able to:
1. Establish a definition of sustainability and a well-accepted framework that outlines the inter-related components of sustainability.
2. Apply concepts and tools to their respective sites.
3. Identify barriers that deter sustainability at each site.
4. Consider respective roles as partners in effecting sustainability at each site.
5. Learn about major current funding sources for community schools.
6. Learn about local, state, and national resources that support the sustainability of community schools.
Tools Organized by Purpose
| Time |
Purpose |
Description |
Tools |
Notes on Tools |
| 30 min |
Arrival/Breakfast/ Welcome and Introductions |
|
|
|
| 25 min |
Sustainability: What is it anyway?
|
Framing of sustainability and lessons learned from shared work |
|
|
| 90 min |
Sustainabiltiy Self Assessment:
Team Time - for discussion
|
Teams use the Finance Project's Sustainability Self Assessment to begin applying new knowledge and focusing on broad aspects of sustainability.
Prompts:
-What does sustainability mean to our sites?
- What woudl sustainability look like at our site?
- What is core and must be sustained
|
|
|
| 60 MINUTES for LUNCH (networking and team building time) |
| 70 min |
Sustainability Overview of Redwood City and Coastside Financing Approaches
|
|
|
start Presentation on Slide 29 |
| 100 min |
Looking at the Data and Planning Next Steps
|
|
|
|
| 10 min |
Final Thoughts and Closing |
|
|
|
Additional Resources from Orignial Session
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Why is this important?
Too often, stakeholders wait until it is too late to begin thinking about sustainability. The Finance Project provides a comprehensive framework to look carefully at each component as part of completing an overall sustainability plan. According to The Finance Project, “good sustainability planning necessitates a clear understanding of what you are trying to sustain.”
Why this module now?
This module was sequenced after vision-setting and program planning had occurred, so that teams had a clear idea of the supports, services, and opportunities that were core elements of their community schools.
What did we do?
It was important to broaden the understanding for all teams of what is entailed in sustaining their initiative beyond the financial aspects of securing funds. Using The Finance Project’s framework the session provided eight clear steps that they could focus on and assess on how they were doing in each of these eight components of an overall plan for sustainability. It was critical that the teams learn how each of them are accountable for sustainability and how they would apply the concepts as it related to what was happening at their own sites.
How did we do it?
· Site teams had homework to review their current site workplan.
· Mini-lecture on The Finance Project’s sustainability framework (eight elements) and on what research says about sustainability.
· Facilitated team discussions on sustainability at each site and then had each of the teams do their own sustainability self-assessment.
· Additional mini-lecture on strategic financing, current funding sources, and analysis of financing approaches in Coastside and Redwood City.
· Academy teams had working time that to chart out their current and possible funding sources.
Reflections and Lessons Learned
· It was important that this session be tied to Session 6 as effective results assessment is key to sustainability.
· Participants learned the definitions and concepts of sustainability based on The Finance Project’s framework. The application activities that required looking at site-specific data were helpful in directing teams to work on what needed to be done.
· Having the teams work in site-based self assessments gave them a clear sense of the work ahead, what gaps there were in creating a sustainability plan, and what other areas needed additional focus.
· Participants got clearer about roles and responsibilities, and began to understand sustainability as a shared responsibility. To support this, team facilitators took the lead in reviewing site data charts with their team in an effort to model the type of leadership that should happen when they are back at their sites.
· The evaluations of this session revealed that the allotted time for concentrated site team work was valuable and appreciated by participants.
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