CYFAR Webinars

Data is a powerful tool that can be used to guide program improvement,
educate stakeholders, inform decision makers, and motivate funders. This
webinar accomplished the following:

- Highlighted online sources of children’s health data;
- Shared resources for promoting good nutrition, physical activity,
sleep, and limited screen time;
- Explained tools offered by the CYFAR PDTA Center to assess children’s
health behaviors and deliver impactful education and outreach; and
- Demonstrated how to use health statistics to influence local policies
and make a case for funding.

This webinar was presented by Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan. It introduced the concept of Critical Mentoring and
explained practical strategies for more effectively working with marginalized youth populations including
Black and Latino youth, immigrant youth, LGBTQ youth, and low-income youth.

Participants learned:
(a) Why social responsibility (commitment to others and the greater good) and civic action (e.g.,
volunteering, community connections) are critical aspects of child and adolescent
development;
(b) Malleable features of youth-adult relationships and program settings that nurture social
responsibility values and civic action; and
(c) Concrete activities and practices for leveraging youth-adult relationships to deepen youth’s
community connections, voice, and social and civic commitment.

This webinar will explore how to balance volunteer management
and development to effectively achieve the mission of your organization.
The content will include:

This webinar explores how program data can be effectively communicated to
stakeholders. The content includes:

• an overview of the Social Development Strategy and how positive youth,
  family, and community development is influenced by the promotion of
  protective factors
• a summary of the eight C’s in the research literature that foster
  resiliency (Caring, Character, Control, Coping, Connection, Competence,
  Confidence, and Contribution)
• the history and importance of data collection for CYFAR Sustainable
  Community Projects
• strategies for framing Common Measures and Core Competency data when
  communicating impacts

Engaging Communities: It’s all about relationships! examines how the CYFAR Core Competencies "Engaging with the Community" skills influence and inform our work with CYFAR audiences and vulnerable populations. Join us as we discuss the ways in which engaging in Peter Block’s 5 essential conversations with communities enhances belonging, ownership, and commitment.

Personal Readiness: It’s an Inside Job! examines how the CYFAR Core Competencies Personal Readiness skills influence and inform our work with CYFAR audiences. The presenters will draw on their extensive experiences delivering CYFAR programs to highlight how improving these skills can help us become more effective educators and community-based program leaders.

This presentation will provide frontline staff and PI’s with the language & knowledge necessary to ensure positive & supportive environments that provide physical, mental, & emotional safety for youths who identify as members of LGBTQ+ communities. Session Objectives: 1. Discuss historical roots & positive & negative uses of language as it relates to LGBTQ+ communities. 2. Review current findings from research with individuals in LGBTQ+ communities 3. Present the differences between sex, gender identity, gender expression, & sexual orientation. 4. Review emerging best practices for inclusion of youth who identify as transgender.

Working with Latino youth is a growing opportunity across our nation. Latino populations can come from 33 different nations bringing to their communities a multitude of languages, traditions, and perspectives. But what does this mean for our youth development practice? Ms. Marcia Rincon-Gallardo and Albino Garcia will share the work that they do with Latino youth, highlighting the reclamation of authentic identity through spiritual healing, cultural, and gender approaches that engage and contribute to positive outcomes for youth.

Dr. Deanna Wilkinson and Mr. Robert Franklin II shared their practitioner experiences of success and challenge working with diverse and underserved populations. Capitalizing on nearly four decades of academic research and practical implementation, both Dr. Wilkinson and Mr. Franklin delivered specific examples of their work, in different communities, developing and expanding resources dedicated to the advancement of peoples for whom access is a challenge.

This webinar focuses on a logic model for sustainability adapted from work by Mary Ann Scheirer and James W. Dearing (2011). This model highlights the influences that inputs, general factors, the economic environment, and outcomes have on sustainability. In addition to fundraising, the webinar touches on communication strategies, partnerships, and monitoring practices that are at the heart of sustainability planning.

Webinar explores the relationship between poverty and obesity. Presenter discusses strategies to promote healthy habits in CYFAR youth and families as well as explores the resources available to CYFAR programs that can assist youth and families achieve a healthy lifestyle.

By emphasizing clear expectations, simple strategies for focusing on increasing good behavior and minimizing not-so-good behavior, increase your understanding of good behavior management techniques. This webinar taught the various ways in which children tend to have difficulty with meeting adult expectations and how development and the environment can shape our understanding of child behavior.

A webinar that attempts to answer questions about childhood obesity, including how it is measured and whether or not it can be prevented.

A CYFAR webinar providing an overview of the CYFAR Core Competencies and how they can be used to strengthen your CYFAR project and support professional development of CYFAR staff. In addition, presenters discuss the professional development resources available through the CYFAR website.

This webinar presented by Ms. Nia Imani Fields from the University of Maryland Extension, Baltimore County Office, explains the basic concepts of social injustice, outlines the community capitals framework with a focus on social capital, and explores experiential activities and evaluation tools to measure the impacts of community and social capital as a conduit to social justice.

To make each CYFAR Site Visit count, grantees need to understand how to prepare and plan for each visit from their CYFAR Coach. This webinar will have taught you how to understand the purpose of the Site Visit, who should participate, and what the outcomes for each visit should include.

Getting out of our own “boxes” sometimes requires keener insight into the minds, habits, likes, and dislikes of those we serve. Forget what you know about Millennials. Today’s young people, Generation Z, are different than any other generation. Research has shown that not only do their brains look different than ours, but they function differently. Participants will explore characteristics of generation Z and learn how these young people think and react to situations. Finally, participants will discover what they can do to bridge the gap between what we as professionals want to teach and what Generation Z wants to know.

The LGBT Youth webinar focuses on how to work with staff to create inclusive spaces and ensure inclusive attitudes and practices. In addition, the webinar discusses how to incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity attitudes in evaluation and measurements.

Group Mentoring webinar focuses on how group mentoring helps make sure all young people experience positive youth development.

CYFAR PDTA Evaluation Specialist Burgess Smith discusses essential topics for a successful CYFAR program evaluation, including the use of Survey Builder, its associated reporting tools, and three other distinct CYFAR reports. Originally delivered in November 2015.

Recorded webinar from October 2014 on Coaching: Relationship-Based Learning.

Recorded webinar from November 2014 on Science Education for Diversity.

Recorded webinar from January 2015 on Health, Wellness, Nutrition, and Food Systems for Native American Communities.

Webinar training from December 2015 on College Readiness for Latino Youth.

Are you a parent educator? Are you interested in learning how to become a more effective parent educator? What credentials allow someone to be called a parent educator? Are you interested in training or certifying parenting educators?

This webinar focuses on helping individuals and families effectively manage stress during the holidays, or any time of year, and is based on the Managing Stress: Turning Challenges into Blessings program developed by Drs. Wally Goddard and James Marshall of University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service.

Outcomes are short-term, intermediate, or long-term benefits participants receive from involvement in a program. While determining short-term outcomes may be relatively straightforward, identifying long-term outcomes can be more challenging. An outcome considered to be intermediate in one program may be seen as long-term by another. The design of the program determines how short-term, intermediate, and long-term outcomes are defined.

This webinar taught new researchers and practitioners in how to navigate the pitfalls and take advantage of resources as they design and implement social science research studies with a child and youth focus. This webinar taught designing a good research project, issues surrounding measurement and psychometrics, issues surrounding use of existing data and instrument development, and questionnaire and survey design.

Do the young people you work with have love lives? Do those love lives ever cause them (or you) problems or concerns? Learn about Relationship Smarts PLUS, an easily implemented, research-based, evaluated program that helps young people get smart about their love lives. Young people today live and breathe in a culture that touts casual sex and casual connections.

This is not another service learning program, but rather a unique civic engagement curriculum rooted in community development that taught public deliberation skills. PEACE is intended to help make the process of teaching citizenship, public deliberation, and civic engagement more enjoyable and youth driven. PEACE is comprised of six lessons and designed as scaffolds where each lesson is used to build into the next lesson.

How does incarceration affect the context and processes of parenting? This research presentation examines how salient demographic status, cumulative disadvantage, institutional practices, and a sociopolitical environment characterized by stigma serve to shape intraindividual and relational processes linked to parental imprisonment.

Tools of the Trade II is a staff-development module that uses a train-the-trainer approach to deliver a comprehensive 21-hour training for after-school program frontline staff and youth workers on incorporating science, engineering, and technology (SET) into after-school programming. Using a hands-on, interactive skill-building approach, it provides tools drawn from best practices to help after-school staff enhance communication, management, and educational delivery of after-school programs.

This webinar is on what it takes to establish relationship and marriage enrichment as well as parenting education programs that adequately meet the unique needs of stepfamilies. The continued prevalence of divorce accompanied by a high remarriage rate has resulted in an increasing number of stepfamilies.

Learn about two exciting Extension marriage education programs and the new National Extension Relationship and Marriage Education Model. The National Extension Relationship and Marriage Education Model is a research-based, theoretically grounded, and best-practice informed tool to help educators design, deliver, and evaluate programs that support healthy couple and marital relationships.

This webinar highlights findings from a national evaluation designed to discover ways states are promoting youth-adult partnerships and other levels of citizenship. The study’s aim was to gain a better understanding of the challenges and successes encountered by 4-H youth development programs when launching statewide initiatives that engage youth and adults as partners.

Did you know that 75% of prison inmates are school dropouts? Increasing graduation rates of males by only 1% would save the country $1.4 billion in reduced crime related costs? With a H.S. diploma the median household wealth increases by 10 fold over a lifetime? With a college degree that number increases to 90 times more median household wealth? An estimated 13 million dropouts over the next decade will cost the nation $3 trillion in lost taxes, incarceration expenses, and social services? Latina/os have a much higher high school dropout rate than do blacks or whites?

Managing Stress focuses on helping families manage stress using the timeless model developed by Reuben Hill and a new program developed by Wally Goddard and James Marshall. The session equips participants to better manage their own stress and help those they serve do the same, providing practical skills and useful materials.

Many families today experience a daily struggle to provide food for their children. This is particularly true for families living in poverty and families who have immigrated to the United States. Food security is especially important for children because their nutrition impacts not only their current health but also their future health and well-being.

This 90-minute webinar focused on what it takes to establish parent education programs in prisons and the latest research-based program resources. It is aimed at educators interested in creating programs for incarcerated parents and providing support to nurture relationships between these parents and their children.

We have long been told to not band-aid problems but to seek to understand the “root cause” and seek lasting solutions through changing the “system.” This lofty idea is very appealing in theory but very difficult to put into practice. First and foremost, while we understand systems conceptually, we are often not clear on how they work and what they mean for us.

Join us for a CYFERnet Community Online Workshop to explore the basic concept of Community Coaching. This is the first event in a five-part series that CYFERnet Community will offer on Community Coaching for Guiding Sustainable Community Change.

Online training to learn the challenges and rewards of working with faith-based audiences and organizations and assisting Extension professionals partnering with the faith-based community in implementing educational programs

Families who spend time outside together with their children in natural environments can increase their physical activity, connect family members with one another, and connect children with nature.

Francesca Adler-Baeder, speaking from an extensive research background on families under stress and children’s experiences in diverse family types as well as practical experience working with a broad spectrum of families, highlights ways to better understand families under stress and empower them to nurture their children.

Youth development is often described as an “emerging field.” Yet youth development principles have long been at the core of community-based youth-serving organizations. In the past 100 years, youth development practice has evolved and there have been advancements in youth development research.

Yoga is a great form of physical and mental exercise for anyone. However, children can also greatly benefit from youth yoga programs. Yoga can help increase strength, flexibility, coordination, self-esteem, stamina, and confidence among children.

How do you think about the world? What dimensions or concepts are most salient? Join Jay Staker and Bob Horton for an intriguing discussion of big ideas and crosscutting concepts and the role they can play in what we observe, what we wonder about, and what we teach and learn.

Francesca Adler-Baeder, speaking from an extensive research background on families under stress and children's experiences in diverse family types as well as practical experience working with a broad spectrum of families, engages us in ways to better understand and empower families under stress to nurture their children.

This introduction to the interdisciplinary field of intergenerational programming covers the latest initiatives aimed at increasing interaction, cooperation, and mutual support between the generations. The presenters highlighted strategies for planning, implementing, and evaluating intergenerational programs.

This webinar addresses the topic of teens and distracted driving, exploring ways to engage and empower youth to be peer educators on this critically important issue. Approximately 24% of all crashes (1.2 million) are estimated to be caused by cell phone use while driving (National Safety Council, 2012).

This webinar reviews the findings from a recent Oklahoma study of parent and youth attitudes on sex education and their implications for educational programming.

Do you offer STEM learning activities in your out-of-school-time program? Are you nervous about providing these activities? Does your staff know how to provide STEM-rich learning?

When is behavior part of normal child development and when is it a problem? How do after-school staff redirect the child who is misbehaving? What can after-school staff do to make a positive and engaging environment for children? Both child and adult behaviors figure into the equation of a positive after-school program.

Join the team of detectives on the mission to explore "the journey of food" through innovative and integrative school and community gardening programs. The webinar will highlight the benefits of gardening, curriculum connections, activities, technology tools, food and nutrition, and related initiatives.

Want to learn about a program that teaches individuals how to balance time, manage stress, eat mindfully, be physically active, and sleep well in order to live a more balanced life? Then this webinar is for you!

Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified prescription drug abuse as an epidemic.

Community Gardens are an underutilized resource for Extension educational programming. While many communities have community gardens, Extension’s involvement varies. Many times, schools, nursing facilities, hospitals, or private landowners develop the gardens with no input from Extension.

This webinar describes a unique study developed to better understand families in which grandparents are raising teenaged grandchildren. Learn how adolescent development is impacted for teens raised by grandparents.

This webinar focuses on three essential keys to nurture and maintain healthy relationships—especially family ones. The Getting Our Hearts Right program reviews several forms of human bias and provides steps to overcome these so that all relationships can be healthier.

Getting Beyond Skills: Getting Our Hearts Right is based on a new program developed by Wally Goddard and James Marshall, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension. The training focuses on how individuals and family members too often become stuck in negative perceptions.

The word collaboration is often used to describe change efforts driven by a cooperating group of stakeholders. However, this collaborative work often fails to achieve the synergistic power that is possible.

Intentional programming and program evaluation go hand in hand. Without intentionally identifying and programming towards targeted, outcomes it becomes impossible to develop a pertinent evaluation.

What does it take to set the stage for an effective intergenerational program? Did you know that the physical environment of an intergenerational program can stimulate or stifle elder and child interactions?

Out-of-school program staff and administrators, youth workers, trainers, and others will learn about bullying and resources for bullying prevention use in out-of-school-time programs. The latest research and a resource guide will be presented.

The Building Family, School and Community Connections for Greater Program Intensity webinar focuses on using an ecological model to strengthen the interface between families, schools and communities and maximize program outcomes. 

The degree of rigor needed in an evaluation is determined by several factors: stakeholder and audience needs, time, budget, and expertise. Choosing the best evaluation design is more of a balancing act of choices than it is selecting a design from a pre-determined hierarchy of rigor.

Join Kyle Hawkey for a webinar discussing using CYFAR Common Measures to plan and implement a successful CYFAR evaluation. Originally delivered in September 2014. To view, download and play the PowerPoint file "Common Measures_for website.ppsx."

Youth create a social issue video and post it on YouTube. After a tweet, retweets, and more tweets, the video goes viral. That issue that youth care about is suddenly all over the net and receiving broad traditional media attention. With a simple click of the mouse, youth voices are being heard—loudly. What’s going on?

Learn to bring Community Coaching into all elements of community planning! This online workshop is part four of the series and helps with conceptualizing community coaching as an integral part of community programs, strategic planning, and community change.

Citizen science has been around for some time. Typically, citizen science engages citizens in acquiring or processing large quantities of data. Weather and climate patterns, phenology, and images of space and planet surfaces are examples of where the scientific community has engaged the public in the data process.