The Chicago Out-of-School Time Project

The Wallace Foundation funded five major US cities in 2006 to develop comprehensive Out-of-School Time Systems for youth in their cities.  While each city had unique organizational, political and funding structures, one of the goals of the Wallace funding was to integrate data and develop a comprehensive view of out-of-school time programs and program quality available for youth in each city.  Strategic Urban was selected by the Department of Children and Family Services and After School Matters to help launch this Wallace funded project in Chicago.  Over four years, we helped Chicago with virtually every aspect of organizational and technical project management.   We helped the executive team develop their organizational and partnership structure, and developed a strategy to encourage and facilitate stakeholder engagement across the organizations through pilot programs and implementing shared technologies.

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