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Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007
David Cicilline  Audio Clip 4
Mayor, Providence, Rhode Island
What sort of partnerships do you need to realize this vision?
Click on the  on the bar above to start the audio.
TEXT VERSION:
In the city of Providence, where the mayor has the ability to appoint the superintendent, and the police chief, and the director of recreation, we began the development of this model with a certain amount of advantage that many communities that don’t have that strong-mayor form of government [don’t have]. So the steering committee for PASA [the Providence After School
Alliance] has on it the superintendent of schools, the director of the department of recreation, the police chief, other important leaders in the city, so that everyone is a partner in terms of the organization of city government, and everyone understands the connection between reducing crime, and healthy recreational activities, and school, and PASA.
But in addition to that, we have outside partners—important funders that I mentioned just a moment ago, which continue to be very important—but all of the providers—all of the organizations that run high-quality after-school programs. PASA doesn’t actually run an after-school program itself; we are the umbrella organization that brings together providers and ensures that they have the capacity and adhere to good quality standards, and we do the tracking so that we have good data and research about where kids are going.
But we have wonderful local partners who provide after-school programming here—the Boys and Girls’ Clubs, the YMCA, the Providence Public Library, City Arts, City Year, New Urban Arts, karate organizations, football, little leagues. We have lots of great local partners. We also now are developing national partnerships. The United States Tennis Association just formed a partnership with PASA. They’ll be providing coaches and equipment and sets of programs in each of the after zones, which are the campuses where all of this is occurring, to introduce kids in urban areas to tennis. So we are always looking for new partners.
We have great partnerships with our universities—with Brown, with Johnson and Wales, with Rhode Island Institute of Design, with PC—that are really actively supporting the work of their after zones in a variety of different ways. We’ll be expanding that to our hospitals, to other nonprofits, to the business community.
The partnership possibilities in this PASA model are limitless. It’s really about the entire community coming together, to work together in a collaborative way to promote the healthy development of our kids.
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