When we think about what it takes for students to thrive, sometimes our efforts need to extend outside of the school day or school building. Access to experiences like dance, music lessons, theatrical performances, and opportunities to explore cultural institutions, expand children’s horizons, shape their identities, and provide spaces where they can learn, engage, and find belonging with their peers. While surely not every student who participates in such opportunities goes on to become a professional dancer or artist, each experience adds another tool to their proverbial toolbelt as they engage with their peers and the world around them, explore challenging learning materials, or begin to imagine their life after school.
For many children and their families, access to these opportunities and experiences is made possible through out-of-school time (OST) programming, which includes structured experiences before and after-school, during the summer, and over holiday breaks when parents seek out supervised care that engages their child and allows them to focus on their workday, knowing their child is in safe hands.
In Kent County, though, the available supply of out-of-school time programming is far below the number of students in our region. For every student enrolled in a program, four more would attend if programming was available (Michigan Afterschool Partnership, Out of School Time Data Project, 2021), signaling a need for additional support to increase access. For that reason, the Steelcase Foundation has long been a supporter of OST programming, given its alignment to our efforts to create spaces of learning, engagement, and belonging for youth.
In 2023, we supported OST programming centered on mentoring and skill building such as Better, Wiser Stronger’s Teach Me 2 Tie program which provides mentoring and topical sessions for young men in 6-8 grades, Camp Blodgett’s FIERCE Leaders Program, which provides yearlong recreation and educational programming, and Boys and Girls Club of Grand Rapids’ Workforce Readiness Programming, which prepares teens for success in their first job and can lead to paid employment as a junior staff person at the Clubs.
We’ve supported programming around the arts such as Project EMSE’s afterschool and summer orchestral music training, Girls Choral Academy’s Grandville Avenue Girls Choir and Campus Choirs, Grand Rapids Civic Theatre’s City Wide Drama Club, Opera Grand Rapids’ summertime Children’s Opera camp, and The Diatribe’s summer self-expression and poetry writing programming.
We’ve supported academic tutoring/instructional supports through Grandville Avenue Art’s and Humanities’ Cook Library After School program, Oakdale Neighbors’ Learning Café, and Refugee Education Center’s Project Faulu K-12 programming. For younger learners, we supported Comprehensive Therapy Center’s Therapy and Fun, which provides summer speech, occupational therapy, and dance-movement therapy to youth ages 2-14 with developmental differences through games, crafts and social activities to help maintain learning gains while providing parents much needed respite.
To enhance both the quality and capacity of local OST providers, we have also supported the Michigan Afterschool Partnership, which provides training and support to OST providers and advocates for the needs of both providers and youth statewide. We hope that by funding both individual providers and the network that supports them, we can increase access to relevant and high-quality programming for youth in our region. Click below to hear from individual providers as they share their insights into this work.
