VPOST Updates

• Educational Advocacy: Thanks to funding from Afterschool Alliance, VPOST has been able to increase advocacy efforts. Blaire recently met with staff for gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, Delegate Carr (Richmond), and will be meeting with Virginia Senator Jennifer McClellan. A request to meet with the Younkin campaign has been made as well. VPOST also facilitated a site visit at the Reston YMCA with Senator Bernie Sanders.

  • Additionally, Blaire and Mark Emery co-authored an opinion piece advocating for funding in the Northern Virginia Sun-Gazette. Read here.

• Youth Entrepreneur Grant: VPOST was recently awarded a grant to promote youth entrepreneurship. The program entitled "Advancing Afterschool and Summer Learning through Youth Entrepreneurship" will bring together partners Hampton City Schools, James Madison University (JMU) XLabs, Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) Title IV 21st CCLC, and Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), to coordinate and develop a strategic approach to high school youth entrepreneurship experiences in Virginia. VPOST will further its Career and Technical Education policy, partnership, and quality goals by developing a responsive Youth Entrepreneurship Strategies (YES) program for use by our community-based, school-based, faith-based, non-profit, and for-profit out-of-school program providers.

• MENTOR Virginia: Jennifer Boyle has left her position as Executive Director of MENTOR Virginia to take on a new role with Junior Achievement. Jennifer will be missed by VPOST! As the seats on our Leadership Advisory Council are organizational seats, we are in communication with MENTOR Virginia's new Executive Director, Natalie Foster, about a new appointment. MENTOR Virginia will be co-hosting our conference this year. More on this at our upcoming LAC meeting!

  
  

• STEM Updates: 

  • Congrats to Gary Artybridge Jr. on being appointed to the Governor of Virginia's newly formed Virginia STEM Education Advisory Board. Gary's leadership will help coordinate and elevate the vital role of OST STEM programs. Press release here.

  • The Virginia After 3PM STEM report was released. While it shows an increase in percentage points for programs offering STEM opportunities when compared to the last report in 2014, please keep in mind this is not an automatic increase in opportunity. The waitlist has increased such that in 2020 for every one child enrolled in an afterschool program four children are waiting. This is compared to 2014 when for every one child enrolled in an afterschool program two were waiting. Therefore, even though more afterschool programs have STEM, the access to the programs themselves has gotten more challenging. Read the STEM After 3PM Factsheet.  

  • The VPOST Equity in STEM coalition will be meeting on September 29th and is continuing to identify assets and challenges to STEM equity across the state, as well as sharing resources from the Million Girls Moonshot.

  • VPOST has been included as a partnering organization to the Fairfax Science Center on their grant to promote the If/Then Collection. VPOST will be hosting an informational webinar on the collection, which is a partnering organization of Million Girls Moonshot, for providers in Northern Virginia.