Members of the Georgia Afterschool Professional Development team gathered May 8-10 in Columbia, S.C. with teams from North Carolina and South Carolina to participate in the C.S. Mott Foundation Afterschool Academies pilot. Teams were made up of front-line afterschool providers and state leaders; the goal was to develop plans for the future of afterschool professional development in the individual states. The Georgia team started with the vision that every Georgia community will have high-quality afterschool programs to help ensure that all children are healthy, safe, educated, employable, and connected.

The Georgia team's developed an action plan; the goal of this plan is interagency alignment and implementation of an afterschool/youth work professional development system. Key steps to be taken to reach this goal include: ensuring that the Georgia professional development system is aligned with and guided by improving youth outcomes, ensuring that the core competencies and content of trainings are aligned with afterschool standards, and conducting a system review.

Afterschool programs and community learning centers are one of the fastest growing providers of education across America. This study indicates that arts education providers now have a unique and exciting opportunity to expand arts participation, inspire, innovate, and cultivate the creative talents of a new generation of young people by developing afterschool partnerships.

Now is the time to reinforce the need to increase funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program so that Georgia is able to fund more afterschool programs across the state. Both chambers will begin debate on the appropriations bill that funds the Department of Education and the 21st CCLC program, which means now is a perfect (and critical) time to make your voices heard! These calls generally don't take more than 10 minutes, but we can't stress enough the importance of each call. NOW is the time to tell your elected officials about:

• the number of participants your afterschool program serves and how successful the program is. Include any evaluation data or information on teacher and parent satisfaction;
• the unmet need for afterschool in your community and how many more children could me served if more resources were available; and
• the impact of frozen funding at the federal level of the 21st CCLC program and how it has translated into cuts at the state and local level.

Chapin Hall Center for Children and the National Conference of State Legislatures present a web conference on June 20, 2007 from 1-2PM EST. This conference will discuss how policymakers, community groups, and employers can better prepare youth for success in the workforce.

BlazeCamp is a six-day, five-night overnight summer camp that provides youth ages 8-18 with a physical disability (such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, amputation, spinal cord injury, visual impairment, blindness, muscular dystrophy or other physical disabilities) with an opportunity to become involved in sport and recreation activities, make friends and have fun. BlazeCamp will be held at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Georgia, June 19-24, 2007. BlazeCamp fee is $325 which includes meals and lodging. BlazeCamp is staffed by Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialists and consists of a 1:5 staff to camper ratio.

On May 3rd, 2007, 30 afterschool leaders from 9 counties in Central Georgia came together in Gray, GA in Jones County for the first regional forum focusing on afterschool and summer learning. Leaders spent time reaching consensus on the main issues the region faces in providing quality afterschool and summer experiences for children and youth. Program funding and transportation to and from programs were acknowledged as major issues. Other issues participants identified included a lack of parental and community buy in and involvement, program capacity and supply and demand problems, lack of effective communication strategies and methods, and a need for programs to share resources, such as curriculums and best practices.

Central Georgia afterschool leaders spent the majority of time brainstorming an action plan to improve afterschool and summer learning in the region. Examples of Central GA's next steps include:

• Gathering data to find out what programs exist in each county
• Mapping out resources in the region that could be shared among programs
• Creating a regional advisory board to represent region and meet with key state-national leaders
• Finding a regional champion for afterschool in Central GA
• Setting up a cross community meetings to develop joint grant applications and other fundraising efforts for program funding

Summer Learning Day is designed to focus local, state and national attention on the issue of summer learning and build public support for a broad range of programs that send children back to school ready to learn. Summer Learning Day events are designed to draw critical attention to the need for summer learning activities for young people while engaging students, parents, policy-makers and community leaders in a meaningful way.

This hands-on, interactive training is designed to help organizations implement the Children's Type 2 diabetes intervention program (TIPPs for Kids) at their site. TIPP's for Kids is a 12-week nutrition and physical activity intervention designed for children and youth between the ages of 10-18. For more information or to register, contact Ruth McGibbon at 404.785.7231 or e-mail ruth.mcgibbon@chao.org.

For more information, please call 404.527.7232.