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!
As a teenager, A’jza escaped her family and hid for three weeks in a friend’s closet. She’s also walked herself to therapy, deciding that she needed mental health support. She learned Omaha’s public transit system as a child, worked a job since she was 12, and has been mistaken for someone almost twice her age – with good reason. Read about how, with a Connected Youth Initiative and Beyond School Bells internship, this remarkable young woman stepped into a thriving career.
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.
Today, Nebraska Children and Families Foundation’s afterschool initiative, Beyond School Bells, and many hardworking partners aren’t just growing greens. That is to say, the Greenery is not your typical afterschool program. Read about how we’re changing the face of afterschool.
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.
Growing the Good Life 