For Afterschool Providers

“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”
– Chinese Proverb

Afterschool, expanded learning, and summer programs can play a big role in providing our students with a world-class education. Simultaneously, afterschool and summer learning program directors across the country have found that adopting a global learning framework can help build program quality and youth engagement.

What’s the best way to create and implement a global expanded learning program? If you are an afterschool or expanded learning provider and you’re looking build a global learning framework into your program, we have some resources and ideas to help you and your staff create a high-quality, global expanded learning program:


Global Competence

Asia Society, in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers, has defined global competence as the capacity and disposition to use knowledge and skills in various disciplines to understand and act on issues of global significance.

If you’re interested in learning more about our definition of global competence and how you can begin integrating it into your expanding learning programs, read our book Educating for Global Competence: Preparing our Youth to Engage the World.

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Expanded Learning Articles and Ideas

Our website offers a series of articles and case studies on how to globalize your expanded learning and afterschool programs and how to utilize these programs to support classroom learning goals. These resources include ideas on how to use afterschool programs to meet the Common Core State Standards (CCSS),  case studies of successful global afterschool and expanded learning programs, and ideas for how to use technology to enhance your global learning programs.

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Expanding Horizons Toolkit for Program Directors

Asia Society’s Expanding Horizons Toolkit for Program Directors is designed to provide strategies and resources to help afterschool program directors and/or site coordinators effectively integrate global approaches across their program mission, design, and administration. The toolkit resources include staff meeting agendas and training plans that program directors and trainers can use to help afterschool practitioners understand global competence and recognize its deep connection to high-quality programming, discover how afterschool programs are well-positioned to provide global learning opportunities and why it is important for them to do so, and create and deliver global learning activities that are meaningful to youth.

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Setting a Global Vision

Supporting young people in developing global competence requires more than just one or two global activities. Although global activities are a great start,  a truly global expanded learning program requires a coherent vision for how you will create a learning experience and environment that promotes global learning.  This vision will allow you to create a mission and goals for how you will reach your goal of building global literacy in your out-of-school program.

The Vision, Mission, Culture, and Environment section of Our Expanding Horizons Toolkit for Directors contains tools that help program directors move staff toward understanding why global competence is important, how to become a global learning role model for youth participants, and how to make global learning a part of everyday program rituals and routines.

Organize a Global Learning Program

A necessary step in establishing and implementing a global learning expanded learning program is to design policies that communicate to all stakeholders (including youth participants, staff, partners, school leadership, community members, and others) that global learning is a priority.

The Organization and Management section of the Toolkit contains tools that help program directors create effective policies, recruit new staff with global expertise and tap into the expertise of existing staff, set up a program schedule that provides multiple global learning opportunities for all participants, and communicate with stakeholders about updated program policies related to global competence and global learning.

Plan a Global Learning Program

Our Expanding Horizons Toolkit also offers advice on how to craft global learning experiences for your youth participants. The Program Planning section of the Toolkit supports program directors in planning a variety of learning opportunities to help young people work toward achieving specific global learning outcomes, and to guide them in exploring global topics from various angles. These tools will help program directors consider how to map global competence to student interests and community assets, how to identify and use themes as a tool for integrating global learning into the afterschool program, and how to identify and plan specific kinds of global learning experiences for young people, including world language learning, community service, and cultural exchange experiences.

This section also contains a resource to help program directors gather and use feedback from stakeholders in program planning.

Focus on Outcomes

Frequent and diverse global learning experience are required to help young people develop global comeptence andother 21st cetnury skills. In order to measure youth progress towards achieving these competencies and skills, program directors must develop spefic outcomes for youth to work towards.

The Youth Development and Outcomes section helps program directors identify specific outcomes for youth to work toward and then map those outcomes onto current program offerings in order to identify which outcomes are addressed by existing programming, and where additional programming is needed to meet the remaining outcomes. This section also provides a resource for assessing the extent to which young people are making progress toward the desired outcomes.

Deliver a Global Learning Program

The Program Delivery section of the Expanding Horizons Toolkit for Directors addresses how to help staff deliver high-quality, effective, globally-focused programming in expanded learning and afterschool programs. This section address one of the vital interaction between line staff and youth participant and how program staff can create a safe space for youth participants to explore global topics and model effective, respectful communication between and among themselves and participants. Within this section you will also find ways to help staff find new resources to help them effectively lead global programming.

Professional Development for Staff

In order to develop an effective global expanded learning program, staff need consistent opportunities to participate in professional development activities that develop their skills as program leaders and global role models. Such professional development can occur in a variety of formats, such as in-person and online trainings, conferences, coaching/observation sessions with supervisors, staff meetings, peer networking and information sharing, and more. Professional development should encourage collaboration and empower staff to seek out the resources that they need to meet their professional goals, as they relate to global competence.

The Professional Development section of the Toolkit contains tools designed to help program directors assess staff needs for professional development, create a professional development plan, and tap into partnerships (including those with schools) to enrich professional development opportunities for staff.

Developing Partnerships

Finding the right community partners can enhance the quality of a global learning program. Therefore, expanded learning program directors should actively and purposefully cultivate strategic partnerships to enrich their programs.

The Families, Communities, and Partnerships section of the Toolkit contains resources and ideas to help staff create and cultivate such partnerships with their youth participants, families, and local communities.

Evaluate a Global Learning Program

Evaluation systems allow you to honestly assess the learning and youth development resulting from your program and to replicate areas of strength and refine those that are not achieving intended outcomes.

Asia Society’s Global Learning in Afterschool Self-Assessment Tool outlines a process for a comprehensive evaluation system for your expanded learning program. The Tool provides a framework for carrying out global program evaluation and can be used in conjunction with other program evaluation methods. The Program Evaluation section consists of resources to help program directors involve various stakeholder groups (including youth) in program evaluation.

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Funding Guide

Asia Society, in collaboration with the Finance Project created the Funding Global Competence guide to teach program directors how to identity funding that will allow them to globalize their programs and make a bigger impact, faster.

Specifically, the guide covers how to frame the argument for global competence; how to manage diverse funding strategies; the types of federal and state funding sources; and how to match funding streams to your goals. The guide introduces other ideas, like the benefits of creating an educational foundation and other resources to turn to for help.

Few funding sources directly target global learning, and issues such as time-limited grants, narrow categorical funding streams, and the downturn in state and school district budgets creates a challenging backdrop against which school leaders seek to implement or expand programs. This guide is designed to help overcome these

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