One of our clients, Bolder Options, is a one-on-one youth mentoring program. Bolder Options recently participated in a pilot program called Quality Mentoring Assessment Path (QMAP), which was rolled out by the Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota (MPM) in 2010. Bolder Options successfully completed a mentoring action plan and achieved a score of 100% – one of only three programs in the state to score so highly! As a result, Bolder Options was named Expert Partner by the association.
Congratulations to the whole team at Bolder Options!
Kirsten and I had a great time at the 2010 American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference last week in San Antonio, Texas! We attended over a dozen sessions that provided valuable tips for our profession. We were also excited to co-present two sessions that highlighted a couple of our clients: the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE) and The Wayside House, Inc.
Kathy Hill from OHE discussed the process used to develop a cost-analysis framework for their GEAR UP program while I reviewed the initial findings of this program on academic outcomes (see Multipaper session 763). Heather Scholz from Wayside House co-presented with Kirsten on the lessons learned implementing mixed-methods and multiple measures in a quality human services evaluation (see Multipaper session 798).
Our winter e-newsletter will feature key takeaways from each session, so stay tuned for that! To subscribe to the e-newsletter, please email our Office Manager, Cassie, at cassie@acetinc.com.
Recently, my husband and I attended the Annual Training for Life dinner for Bolder Options, an activity-based one-on-one youth mentoring organization based in Minnesota. Bolder Options works to build self-esteem and promote healthy behaviors in youth through running and biking, academic goal setting, and volunteerism. The video shown below highlights the key components of Bolder Options, which include empowering youth to focus on the positives in life. In the video, Dr. Peter Benson, CEO of Search Institute, names Bolder Options as “one of the best in America” in helping youth to achieve their goals. ACET has been contracted to evaluate the program and document successes since 2005.
This video from the National Medical Report describes Bolder Options in detail and was played at the Annual Training for Life dinner this year:
Recently, I attended the Combined Discretionary Grantee Meeting in Washington D.C. with The Wayside House, Inc., a chemical health organization dedicated to providing treatment for chemical abuse exclusively to women. They received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families Children’s Bureau, to create a residential family treatment program. The program, Incarnation Family Connections (IFC), is a family treatment program with housing options. IFC enables parents and their children to live in a safe environment for a period of not less than six months. IFC provides onsite substance abuse treatment services and children’s early intervention services that are designed to provide comprehensive treatment that supports the whole family unit. ACET was contracted to evaluate the IFC program, implement a quasi-experimental design to measure impact, and contribute to cross-site evaluation efforts.
This video, which describes Wayside House and its programs in detail, was played for a national audience at the Grantee Meeting: