Registration Open for National Leadership Forum

Join leaders from around the country who are striving for big and challenging goals:

• for young people to be ready for college, work and life;
• for communities to offer high-quality supports year-round;
• for leaders to work collectively and effectively to make this happen.

The Ready by 21 National Meeting is for leaders like you working at any level – from state policy coordination and community-wide cradle-to-career efforts to out-of-school time systems, single issue coalitions and neighborhood-based initiatives – who want to learn from your peers, access proven tools and strengthen your capacity for collective impact. Attendees will include local and state leaders from United Ways, business, nonprofits, education, policy, philanthropy and intermediaries, as well as national leaders from organizations that are partners in delivering Ready by 21 strategies. You will connect with other leaders from across communities, states and sectors to strengthen your network and find answers to your toughest challenges.
Session formats will vary from keynotes and plenary panels to small group discussions, demonstrations of how to use concrete tools, and peer learning circles. There will be more than two dozen sessions to choose from, with topics such as:

• Choosing, building or changing your backbone organization
• Strengthening out-of-school time through quality improvement systems
• Exploring the application of best business practices – like data analytics and third-party certification – to community change partnerships
• The recurring steps in community change management
• Community overload: managing multiple national initiatives, learning communities and campaigns
• Aligning policies across issues, agencies and ages
• Collective impact strategies for reaching disconnected youth
• Developing leadership and policy coordinating bodies
• Connecting work across geographic levels, from neighborhoods to communities to states
• Expanded learning time: aligning school and non-school supports and outcomes
• Creating a balanced set of child & youth outcomes and indicators

We hope you’ll join us, March 11–13, 2013, at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel. Register online. For more information see www.readyby21.org/nationalmeeting or call the Forum for Youth Investment at 202.207.3328.  

Interested in more upcoming events? Check out the Opportunity Board.

Patrick Boyle is Communications Director for the Forum for Youth Investment. He shapes stories about the work of the Forum and its partners by writing and overseeing its communications materials, including reports, blogs, columns, case studies, e-newsletters and news releases.
Patrick is a veteran journalist with extensive experience covering youth issues as editor of Youth Today, as a reporter for The Watertown Daily Times and The Washington Times, and as a contributor to the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, ABC News, and Child and Parenting magazines, among others. He is the author of Scouts’ Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution, and a Huffington Post blogger who specializes in fathering issues.
A Long Island native, Patrick earned his bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts from the University of Dayton (Ohio) and his Master of Journalism degree from the University of Maryland. He enjoys coaching youth sports, reading and rooting for the New York Mets, which shows real character.