Stoneleigh Emerging Leader Fellow, Phila. Youth Network

Posted by on December 04, 2011

EMPLOYING KNOWLEDGE: WHERE THEORY AND PRACTICE MERGE

To apply for this fellowship, please go to the Stoneleigh website and complete the Individual Application. Send the completed application to Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, Vice President, Performance Management and Evaluation, at ctownsend@pyninc.org; call 267-502-3754 with any project-related questions.

http://stoneleighfoundation.org/fellows/programs/emerging-leader-fellowship/application

Created as a vehicle to sustain and extend the work of the City’s highly successful School-to-Career system, the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) has grown since its 1999 incorporation into a nationally-recognized intermediary organization for public and private investment directed at youth workforce development in the Philadelphia region. As a champion for youth participation in a global economy, the Philadelphia Youth Network has contributed to the local landscape of youth programming, educational options and interventions by developing, implementing, replicating, and overseeing effective models — program models, network models, and operational models — designed to improve the educational and economic outcomes of Philadelphia’s young people, especially those most at risk: youth living in poverty, those who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out of school, and youth who have been adjudicated or involved with the foster care system. More about PYN’s initiatives and programs can be found at www.pyninc.org.

One of PYN’s core functions is to build the capacity of the local youth-serving, provider network. Increasingly, organizations are looking to PYN to support their efforts around performance management, with the goal of enhancing their capacity to tell their respective impact stories. Through this project, PYN’s Performance Management and Evaluation Unit (PMEU) will enhance its own ability to meet the program administration and performance management needs of our provider network. The PMEU has grown substantially over the last five years. It has realigned program performance metrics, developed a comprehensive participant tracking system, and enhanced PYN’s internal capability to report program performance. With work supported by this project, PYN will be better equipped to model for its network of providers how to use data-driven decision-making to enhance program models, refine program components, and manage program service, all of which will increase both providers’ capacity to provide high-quality youth workforce-development services as well as PYN’s ability to manage the systemic investment of public and private dollars.

With the support of a Stoneleigh Emerging Leader Fellow, the PMEU will research best practices in the field of performance management and capacity-building and connect that research to PYN’s own historical lessons learned. PYN will use these findings to (1) develop a codified approach to performance-management capacity-building that PYN can offer to providers delivering PYN’s program models and (2) evaluate provider improvement on an extant, PYN-developed capacity scale. This work will inform how PYN defines technical assistance (TA) strategies, and help the organization to improve the delivery of capacity services to Providers. Ultimately, the Stoneleigh Fellow’s contribution will support PYN’s strategy to develop capacity-building services that infuse data-driven decision making into program management.

PYN prefers a candidate with a bachelors or masters-level degree (in public policy, social work, education or related fields) with an interest in non-profit operations, specifically service delivery, program management, and/or performance management. A successful applicant will need to demonstrate the following skill set: excellent written and verbal skills; demonstrable research skills; capacity to integrate and apply information culled from various sources; ability to work independently as well as part of a team; and familiarity with and/or willingness to engage quantitative/qualitative data and computer/database skills (exposure to Microsoft Excel, Access ).