Meet our new generation of businesspeople!
Girls create DJing businesses. Kids embody different food truck roles. Youth operate socially-conscious clothing brands and learn braiding, cosmetology, budgeting, and pricing, all thanks to your support of our Beyond School Bells initiative, VentureLab, and Young Entrepreneurs of the Future Omaha!
Nebraska Children and Families Foundation is dedicated to weathering the storm. Although these storms come and go, one thing remains for certain within uncertainty: together, with your support, we can continue to stay afloat and redirect ourselves during rough weather. Beyond School Bells, our afterschool network of dedicated statewide professionals has truly done an incredible job of remaining buoyant during difficult times. For the third time since the pandemic, the team and their partners, the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE), NDE’s 21st Century Community Learning Center, and Nebraska Extension rescheduled GetConnected 2022, their statewide conference of afterschool learning leaders, and on Feb. 25, it was finally able to happen!
In the real world, failure is often viewed as a disappointment. Whether we blame our shortcomings on others or the world at large, when we don’t achieve our goals or embody our envisioned success, we often feel helpless. The good news is Nebraska Children’s Beyond School Bells, Nebraska 4-H Youth Development, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Honors Program can change this mindset through quality afterschool programming in the form of “winternships” and more!
Meet Denise Daugherty.
“Now I do what makes me happy. I’m not worried about others. The reason I got into trouble was that I needed to love and protect people.” Denise Daughtery reveals how she pushed beyond foster care and incarceration and into her dreams with Beyond School Bells, Connected Youth Initiative, and Central Plains Center for Services’ coaching and support. Read more.
Afterschool’s Impact: “It Prepared Me for Being a Leader in the Adult World; I Have No Fear of Leading Adult Men or Women in STEM.” Read more about Kathy.
When Lauren Mott walked into her first job at an afterschool program, she saw children who became restless due to being unengaged. Wordlessly, she came into the classroom the next day with a box of supplies, sat down by herself at a table, and began making friendship bracelets. Read more about how this moment and others sparked Lauren’s passion for STEM diversity and afterschool learning.
Meet Amanda Gutierrez. Amanda is passionate about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). She’s planning on being an astronautical engineer. Amanda is also one of the newest members of the Million Girls Moonshot (MGM) Advisory Board. MGM is a multi-year, national initiative organized by STEMNext to increase the presence of women of color and other underrepresented groups in STEM. STEMNext awarded an MGM grant to Beyond School Bells (BSB), Nebraska Children’s initiative supporting afterschool and summer learning in Nebraska. Read about why STEM is Amanda’s passion and how a trip to the moon might be in her future.
If you visit Crete Public Schools’ campus, you’ll notice a sense of life. Monarchs flitter through gardens. Heirloom vegetables thrive in the greenhouse. Cardinals return to roost in trees. This revitalization is no accident; it is the result of Cardinal Community Learning Centers’ (CCLC) outdoor education program. This lively scene is also proof that working together, as a community, we can turn old spaces into vibrant new ones while creating opportunity and abundance.
Beyond School Bells and Cardinal Community Learning Centers revitalize outdoor spaces and create quality learning opportunites, thanks to supporters like you. Read more.
BSB and UNL design studios create ACTivate. ACTivate is a college-readiness progrma that pairs UNL Honors students with GIPS students. The program provides test-prep for lower-income youth and the support they need to feel college-ready.
Nebraska Children and Families Foundation is on board with purposeful afterschool programs like these. We are home to Beyond School Bells (BSB), a dedicated network of afterschool professionals who create, sustain, and enhance quality expanded learning programs, or ELOs.
Beyond School Bells is always glad to catch up with one of our partners and afterschool programs like Aftershock, which recently began a podcasting club. Say what you will about afterschool and summer programs, but they are anything but just babysitting. Here, kids build gumdrop towers, create robots, learn boradcasting and podcasting, and prepare for careers.
Growing the Good Life 