Congratulations to Hello Insight's 2018 HI Impact Award Recipients

by Kim Sabo Flores, Ph.D.

One of the most exciting things about working with Hello Insight's community is the opportunity to witness the breadth of the incredible youth development work we support. We’re as committed to continuous improvement as you are and are constantly looking for new ways to contribute to our members’ success.

We are especially excited to highlight patterns of growth in social and emotional learning (SEL) for the young people represented by our platform. SEL is the mark of thriving young people, and SEL in young people predicts many outcomes related, not only to education, but also health and overall well-being as young people transition to adulthood. Each year, we analyze the data collected by our growing community of more than 300 programs across 20 states in order to identify organizations and programs supporting exceptional growth in SEL so that we can celebrate their success and highlight fresh insights to support all of us in helping young people to thrive.

Here’s how we did it:

Step One: Measure Success
In the 2016/2017 school year, we analyzed data from 68 organizations with 150 programs run by hard-working, passionate staff helping more than 4,000 talented young people reach their fullest potential. By using our growing data set and machine learning techniques, we were able to identify how young people grow, accounting for age, grade, gender, ethnicity, and starting place when they entered the program. We have seen that, typically, young people who enter a program with limited SEL skills demonstrate modest growth, while young people who enter with high SEL scores tend to maintain their skills or grow faster.

Step Two: Identify High-Impact Programs and Organizations
Understanding typical growth helps us to identify programs where young people are developing SEL skills faster than expected — no matter their starting place. This year, we identified four organizations and 20 programs that were having an exceptional impact on the young people they served. These high-impact programs represent the top 15% of programs in our platform over the time period studied. High-impact organizations represent the top 10% of organizations. When a single organization is operating multiple HI Impact programs, we know something really special is happening. In these programs there is a culture of ongoing learning and strong values and practices related to positive youth development. In fact, last year, we learned that these organizations were employing staff development strategies that mirrored exceptional youth development practice.

Step Three: Lift Up and Learn from Success, Together
We are honored to recognize these leaders in the youth development field — leaders we can learn from. We plan to hold a series of in-depth conversations and engage in an ongoing dialogue throughout the next year to figure out what differentiates these programs from the pack. Last year, we recognized these programs and organizations as “Positive Deviants” and worked with them, in conjunction with our partners at Youth, INC and NewsCorp, to produce a white paper highlighting the common practices between these groups. We are so proud of The Art and Science of Creating Effective Youth Programs, which continues to be a useful resource to the community, and we hope to build on it. This year, we plan to hold a series of in-depth conversations and engage in ongoing dialogue to build a digital library of field-tested tips and strategies in the form of blog posts, webinars, and more.

In the spirit of collaborative learning, we present the 2018 HI Impact Award recipients:

HI Impact Organizations

HI Impact Programs