Sponsored by:
The San Antonio Area Foundation has kept a steadfast commitment to supporting and uplifting youth in our community for decades.
A vivid example of this work is reflected in the evolution and success of what began as an internal initiative eventually blossoming into a key programming component of UP Partnership, one of our community’s leading educational nonprofits, and the community-wide strategic plan Future Ready Bexar County.
Excel Beyond the Bell San Antonio (EBBSA) was created in 2012 to serve as a network for community leaders to address the needs of the city’s young people after school and in the summer months.
Often, working families with fewer resources struggle to find quality care for their children and youth in these critical windows. In trying to remedy this dilemma, the youth development leaders spearheading the Area Foundation’s EBBSA network committed to core tenets to help guide their efforts.
The network’s original working groups focused on youth development, educational success for young people, high quality out-of-school programs and data management. As the network progressed, these foundational principles broadened to include a focus on racial equity and the pursuit of continuous improvement within organizations and programs.
“The Area Foundation conducted research on how to impact high school completion and found that out-of-school programs were a big contributor,” explained UP Partnership’s CEO, Ryan Lugalia-Hollon, Ph.D. He has had a first-row seat to the organization’s growth since early days as an Area Foundation employee overseeing the EBBSA program.
That first effort, dubbed “High School Completion,” was launched in 2011 to support out-of-school activity engagement for young people. Early program research showed that, to help students graduate, out-of-school time programs are needed beginning in the sixth grade.
There were — and still are — scores of groups and organizations conducting these types of programs for students. But a need was readily identified to help them share key resources, like professional development and data analysis, and to coordinate their efforts and the Area Foundation helped fill that void.
“[The Foundation] started meeting with a lot of these [organizations] and that was how EBBSA started,” said Gavin Nichols, a Senior Program Officer with the Area Foundation’s Community Engagement and Impact team. “The change we made was to start working with the directors and CEOs to try and figure out ways to be more effective in the community.”
Nichols has been with the Area Foundation for 15 years and has also witnessed the initiative’s evolution from its creation.
With active support from Francisco Gónima a contracted facilitator, EBBSA had found its niche and its mission. Under Lugalia-Hollon, the initiative’s first full-time staff, the network started to grow into a serious force for positive change.
“The work of social change and the work of youth development can be very isolating. This work is frequently under supported and under resourced,” Lugalia-Hollon explained. “[It has been] well-documented that there are many direct benefits for children and youth participating in these programs, both academic and social, as well as emotional and mental health. Out-of-school time programs are also essential for working parents who lack access to traditional childcare.”
The Area Foundation and EBBSA became true pioneers in recognizing the need for quality out-of-school programming for children in Bexar County. Many local nonprofits, such as Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA), Say Sí and Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio, all became part of the network and benefited from the partnership.
“[EBBSA] is valuable to a city like San Antonio because its network of nearly 50-plus organizations, instead of working separately, are now working together,” noted Nichols. “They’re sharing best practices. They’re working with the staff at the different organizations to be stronger. All of this is working toward the goal of helping the youth of San Antonio succeed.”
In 2017, Lugalia-Hollon became CEO of the newly formed UP Partnership, merging with its predecessor, P16 Plus Council of Greater Bexar County, and offered to bring EBBSA under the UP umbrella to ensure a smooth transition and to maintain its success.
To date, EBBSA has made significant achievements for youth serving organizations, including:
Development of an Education Success Scorecard, a program impact dashboard for youth development agencies. Since its launch in the 2017-2018 school year, the number of participating school districts grew from three to seven. Last year’s dashboard included 14,.978 students, with 94% promoted to the next grade compared to 85% of all ISD students in the participating districts.
Securing nearly $25 million for young people through the City of San Antonio’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds in 2022, which allowed partners to enhance their youth development programming and mental health services.
A collaboration with the Minnesota-based Search Institute, a positive youth development and equity-focused research organization, to collaboratively expand Excel Academy, a program that cultivates leadership among youth serving professionals, with an emphasis on racial equity and augmenting the knowledge of developmental relationships, to a national scale.
Under UP Partnership, the Future Ready Bexar County Plan was created, taking the network to the proverbial next level. It calls for 70% of all high school graduates in the city to attain a post-secondary career credential or education by 2030. Through it all, the Area Foundation has remained a steady and valuable partner, which includes being a key anchor partner ensuring the overall success of the plan.
“Since I’ve been here, every step of the way, the Area Foundation has been one of our closest and most important partners,” Lugalia-Hollon noted. “They’ve both invested in the work of the city-wide Future Ready movement, and they’ve aligned their professional developments around that as well.”