Data-platform grant to help youth programs gain insights

Saturdays in LaBrian Phillips’ childhood home, fluorescent lights were off, sunlight shone through windows and Ne-Yo’s music drowned out other sounds.

Phillips, now 19, said his mother designated Saturdays as their cleaning days. Together, they’d do chores, play tag and sing along to R&B tunes, he said.

Then, on May 10, 2006, a man waited for Phillips’ mother, Shaneda Ricks, to get home.

Dennis Earl Handie, Ricks’ ex-boyfriend, shot and killed the mother of three. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2007.

In the aftermath of his mother’s killing, Phillips retreated. They’d been best friends.

“I really didn’t talk much. I lost a lot of social skills,” Phillips remembered.

So when his grandmother saw him show an interest in an after-school program, Life Skills for Youth, she enrolled Phillips immediately.

After school, Phillips would play games, eat meals, socialize and get homework help. As he grew up, Phillips worked for the program in the summer months.

This December, Phillips, a collegiate cheerleader, finished his first semester at Arkansas Tech University. He’s studying nursing with a minor in business.

Phillips is a success story for Life Skills for Youth and one of many stories the youth program, and other programs like it, want to tell through a new data tracking platform.

In October, the Boys and Men Opportunity Success Team was awarded a yearlong, $160,000 grant from RISE, a national organization.

The success team is a collection of community organizations, like Life Skills for Youth, and colleges in central Arkansas. Its mission is to improve the lives of boys and men of color in central Arkansas. It is overseen by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

With the money, the foundation will construct an online platform so all the groups can track, through data, the progress of the children and teenagers they serve.

“Each of the groups has similar, but in some ways unique, missions,” said Cory Anderson, the foundation’s executive vice president.

“So what we want to do with this project are try to identify the five, six, seven, eight common indicators that programs would be able to collect,” he said.

Grades, educational growth, time management, self-motivation and other “soft skills” are all factors that can be assessed, he said.

With those measurements, program leaders can show not just anecdotes but statistical evidence to potential financial backers and community leaders.

“We want to be able to tell a story. And data is a part of that story,” Anderson said. “Not the whole story, but a part of that story.”

And, he added, data offer a new way to answer a question that’s been asked for generations in central Arkansas: “How do we support young people in this community?”

IMPROVING THROUGH DATA

During an afternoon at Life Skills for Youth’s headquarters, Larry Clark sharpens a pencil for a boy who can’t reach the sharpener.

Clark weaves in and out of primary-colored classrooms in a church off Interstate 30.

He founded the program a decade ago, and it has since expanded to serve 180 students a day, with about 25 staff members on the payroll.

Each child gets a snack and supper, plus homework help. Older youths get job connections to businesses like Eat My Catfish and are counseled on college options. They’re schooled on management of anger, time and money.

Many of the children are from poor backgrounds and come from single-parent homes, Clark said.

“I really take pride on making sure these kids know that we love them,” he said.

Clark is no stranger to improving his organization through data. After taking input from parents, he realized it would benefit them if he stayed open later into the evening so a mother or father could enroll in college classes.

Life Skills for Youth is open after school until 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and has hours during the summer.

Clark’s funding comes from several sources: donations, grants and two contracts with the city of Little Rock. Clark said that this year he received a total $150,000 from the city to serve 60 children.

The amount has remained the same for the past five years, though Clark said he approached city officials in September about increasing those contracts.

Life Skills for Youth currently tracks each child’s attendance, grades and behavior and reports figures back to the city.

But with the new data platform, Clark wants to expand his knowledge base. He wants to know “what can we do, as a whole, for a family, not just a kid,” he said.

Clark would also like to pay his staff members more than once a month. Data could help him tap into new monetary streams, he said.

“You really want to capture the data because, especially where I’m at, going into my 10th year, when you go to a foundation or a different funding source, they want to know what you’ve done,” Clark said.

“Every site, every organization needs those operational expenses,” he later added.

From the home base of another Little Rock youth program, Bridge 2 Success, the Rev. Ronald Wilkerson agrees. The organization, at 3409 Baseline Road, will also use the data platform to track its youth when it’s completed.

A steering committee will select a design firm to build the online platform. It will likely be finished next fall, Anderson said.

Wilkerson started his group six years ago. His campus has a computer lab, pool and foosball tables, a kitchen and comfortable chairs for teens to unwind before homework time.

He also has professionals teach the youths how to play chess, dress for success and practice healthy habits.

Wilkerson is funded partially by the city, along with grants and donations. This year, the city’s contract is for $300,000, he said. Wilkerson estimates he serves between 11,000 to 12,000 youths every year.

One of them, Colby Thomas, said Bridge 2 Success taught him “how to be close to people.”

The same is true for 18-year-old Stormie Watson, who said her brother was convicted on a murder charge when she was young. Before Bridge 2 Success, he was the only person she talked to, Watson remembered.

Now she’s studying criminal justice in college and wants to become a homicide detective.

For Kira Cunningham, a freshman at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the program helped with soft skills more than academics.

“My grades were good, but my attitude was horrible,” Cunningham said, referring to herself as a preteen when she entered the program.

Like Clark, Wilkerson already tracks certain data and submits them to the city. But he sees the data platform as a new way to approach funding sources.

“Most corporations and foundations want to see what you’re doing. How many people are you working with? What’s actually happening in the lives of those people that you’re engaging?” he said.

Aside from aiding Clark, Wilkerson, and other people who run such programs, data will also help a student monitor himself, Anderson said.

“These young people, they’re no different than anyone else. We all want to know that we’re making progress, that we’re moving forward,” he said.

When Phillips, the college freshman, was asked how Clark and his program changed the course of his life, he took a moment to answer.

“Now that I’m looking back on it, I’m just like, wow,” he said.

“I’ve never just sat down and thought about all that he’s done, all the times he’s been there and I had a game or a play or a concert,” Phillips said.

More than a decade after his mother’s death, Phillips describes himself as energetic and talkative.

“Without the program, I don’t think I would have had any of those personality traits. I would still be off to myself.”

He paused.

“I wouldn’t be me.”

“These young people, they’re no different than anyone else. We all want to know that we’re making progress, that we’re moving forward.” — Cory Anderson, executive vice president, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation