Adult Education Organizations and Programs

Group 3 Members	Roles	Commented On
Kayla Dusseau	Put together introduction and implications of United Way	Group 1
Marie Prevost	Put together introduction and implications for CEDA	Group 1
Kylie Hartman	Put together main programs/learning activities and comparison sections for United Way	Group 1
Shimera Thomas (co-leader)	Put together main programs/learning activities and comparison sections for CEDA	group 4
Amber Smith (co-leader)	Write paper introduction, complete summary table, and edit document	Group 4

Adult Education Organizations and Programs

EDAC 631 - Group 3

Ball State University

Introduction

Adult education does not occur only in classrooms, it can also be found in community-based programs that work to better the lives of the population. This paper highlights the United Way and Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, both of which are community-based programs that strive to improve the lives of their communities through a variety of programs. The paper describes each organization with a review of the main programs, including a comparison of the programs. The paper concludes with an implications section highlighting what adult educators can learn from the organizations and programs.

United Way

Introduction

The United Way was founded by Frances Wisebart Jacobs, the Rev. Myron W. Reed, Msgr. William J.O’Ryan, Dean H. Martyn Hart and Rabbi William S. Friedman in 1887 (“Our History,” 2018). They came together to create the nation's first united campaign to help organize and collect funds for local charities. They would also help counsel and refer those in need to the appropriate agencies and help with emergency assistance for those they could not refer (“Our History,” 2018). The United Way has since expanded to serve worldwide in 1800 communities across 40 nations and territories (“Our History,” 2018). United Way’s mission states “Our mission is to improve people's lives by mobilizing the caring power of our community. We address critical needs today and work to reduce those needs tomorrow” (“Our Mission, Goals,” 2018, Mission section, para. 1).
To achieve this United Way has set three focus areas, education, income and health. United way wants to help children, youth and adults achieve their potential by being ready for kindergarten, graduating with a plan, and building life and job skills (“Our Mission, Goals,” 2018). They do not solely focus on children graduating, but adults as well, by making sure everyone has the necessary skills to be productive in society. When it comes to the focus area of income, the United Way empowers people to get on stable financial ground (“Income,” 2018). They provide job training, financial wellness classes, and programs like MyFreeTaxes (“Income,” 2018). MyFreeTaxes provides free tax preparation for qualifying individuals and families (“Income,” 2018). The last focus area is health and the United Way helps individuals and families meet basic needs with access to food, a stable place to live, and health and wellness care (“Our Mission, Goals,” 2018).

Main Programs & Learning Activities

The United Way offers a wide variety of programs and learning activities to the public.  One such program is the Born Learning Program. Everyday life can be a learning experience for both adults and children. Born Learning is a public engagement campaign that helps parents, grandparents and caregivers explore ways to turn everyday moments into fun learning opportunities (“About United Way Born Learning,” n.d.). Since school readiness is a continuously growing concern, there is an overwhelming plethora of information out there. This abundance of information can leave parents and caregivers overwhelmed and unsure where to turn. Therefore, the United Way has worked with many other organizations to launch the Born Learning campaign. According to United Way Born Learning (n.d.), the campaign works to include easy-to-understand resources for adults to access. The resources includes information on how to use “everyday moments” to help children succeed. United Way Worldwide has also spread public awareness for Born Learning so families can easily access these opportunities for their children (“About United Way Born Learning,” n.d.).

Just as so many other things vary from community to community so do the educational needs of the local youth. Therefore, Born Learning adjusts the support given depending on the needs of the youth in each community. It also adjusts to the parent’s level of need to help support and teach them to use everyday life events to teach their children. The overall goal of this program, is to prepare as many children as possible to enter school fully prepared with the tools they need to be successful.

        Some other great programs through the United Way are Hometown Huddle and Character Playbook which partner with the National Football League (NFL). The NFL has long been a major supporter of the United Way and the programs it offers. The NFL and the United Way have the longest running collaboration in history between a major sports league and a nonprofit - a powerful vehicle for change in communities (“Our Partners / United Way Worldwide,” n.d.). Hometown Huddle is a program that teaches youth and their parents ways to live active and healthy lives by promoting healthy habits. Character Playbook is a program that works with families to promote healthy relationships and good decision making.

Comparison

The mission of the United Way is to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good ("Our Mission / United Way Worldwide,” n.d.).  The Born Learning program, Character Playbook, and Hometown Huddle through the United Way, are all based off experiential learning. Setting good examples and learning by doing are all key factors in these programs. All three programs strive to better people’s lives early on, so they can promote strong, healthy life-long lifestyles. All three programs are examples of informal education programs. They all take place in settings other than the typical classroom setting.

Unlike Hometown Huddle and Character Playbook that promote healthy lifestyles with the aid of role models such as NFL players, Born Learning works to help parents be their children’s role models and educators. Born Learning unlike Character Playbook looks to assists parents and children prior to entering school. The Character Playbook program works with middle school children exclusively. Hometown Huddle on the other hand works with children of all ages. The impact the United Way has goes beyond temporary fixes to create lasting change in communities around the world. By bringing people and organizations together around innovative solutions, the United Way impacts millions of lives every year ("United Way Worldwide," n.d.).

Adult and continuing education is usually embedded within larger organizations that are primarily designed for another purpose (Kasworm, Rose, & Ross-Gordon, 2010, p. 6). The United Way does just that as they take every day learning situations and teach parents how to use these to educate their children, promote healthy lifestyle, and make positive choices. Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience (McLeod, 2017). The United Way adjusts and manipulates programs based on what works and what does not. They look at each individual community and find out what works for that specific community’s needs. These programs are based around the ideas of experiential learning and planning. These programs not only support parents to promote learning through everyday activities, but also prepare each community’s youth for success when entering school and promotes healthy relationships, healthy and active lifestyles, and good decision making.

Implications

The United Way’s overall mission is to improve people’s lives by utilizing the caring power of communities. The United Way has done a great job of bringing communities together to help those in need. They have created three areas to focus on to help them achieve their mission. This helps keep their focus on what they would like to accomplish and gives them a clear understanding of how they would like to help their communities. United Way is a worldwide organization. They have been able to help millions of people by always keeping their mission at the forefront. They utilize experiential learning in many of their programs, including Born Learning, where they create teachable moments through individual’s everyday lives.

We can take many of United Ways’ strategies into the adult learning realm. We can make resources easier to understand and more readily available. Educators can help spread public awareness throughout their communities to help adult learners. United Way also does a great job of adjusting to the individual needs of the person or community it is helping. Lastly, the United Way helps create lasting changes within communities worldwide. When changes need to be made we need to create teachable moments for all, not just individuals or policy makers.

 Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, Inc. (CEDA)

Introduction

The Cook County Office of Economic Opportunity was created in Illinois in 1965 after the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 by Congress (Community Economic Development Association, 2017). In 1967, this office became a private, not-for-profit, organization renamed to Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, Inc. (CEDA), focused on addressing poverty in suburban areas of Cook County (CEDA, 2017). CEDA creates Community Action Plans and utilizes grant money to provide programs “aligned with CEDA’s mission of self-sufficiency and improved quality of life for low-income people” (CEDA, 2017, para. 5). Today CEDA, according to their community action plan (2017) works with community organizations to support community needs, focus groups, planning, and data collection to stay aware of services being provided and any gaps the organization may need to fill.

Main Programs & Learning Activities

In an effort to diminish the hardships of low-income families in-crisis, CEDA has developed several resource programs to assist families to advance and thrive. Their agency offers various programs such as nutrition support, employment opportunities, and utility assistance to support local neighborhoods and communities (CEDA, 2017).

CEDA provides an Employment Services Program with Job Readiness Training (JRT) to enhance the job skills of unemployed eligible participants to assist them in becoming self-sufficient (CEDA, 2017). Eligible participants must meet income guidelines, be a resident of the county, and be able to provide documentation of need (CEDA, 2017). JRT is conducted as a short term, intimate group setting. JRT includes hard skill and soft skill development and training in the small group setting to allow the participant to demonstrate knowledge of creating a resume, adequate interviewing skills, explaining proficiencies, and job retention (“Employment Program,” n.d.). After the initial JRT the participant is then trained at a company that partners with CEDA to gain work experience, which may lead to full time employment (“Employment Program,” n.d.).

A second program that CEDA promotes is a nutrition program in collaboration with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to provide eligible families access to fresh, nutritious, high-quality produce (CEDA, 2017). Provision of fresh produce greatly increases the variety of food available to participants, without the fresh component participants would be limited to shelf-stable food. The nutrition program offers informal education through the participant’s experience with the fresh produce which may include simply looking at or touching the food, or through the experience of preparing the fresh produce at home. It also allows the opportunity for information on recipes and brief nutrition education if the participant raises a question to staff of how to prepare or utilize the food at home. Additionally, workshops on meal preparation and food budgeting are offered by CEDA through a collaboration with the University of Illinois Extension Program (CEDA, 2017).

Comparison

CEDA’s overall goal and mission is to support adults who are experiencing hardship to establish personal short-term goals with the program in order to thrive in meeting their target goals (CEDA, 2017). Knowles theory of self-directed learning in informal education settings is connected to programs found in CEDA and the YMCA (Merriam, 2007). The adult learner usually applies for these programs when they have reached a milestone in their life. That milestone could be the realization of a basic need to be filled in a urgent manner. Knowles indicates that adult learners have discern instinct to seek resources when needed through experience, observation, and knowledge (Merriam, 2007).  These are groundwork programs that support adult lifelong learning skills and encourage self-sufficiency.  The programs benefit adult learners in casual learning experiences. There is not a specified or formal learning structure in either of the  program’s learning environmental settings. Usually there are scheduled job fairs, intimate groups settings, and one on one correspondence to aid adult learning. As non-for-profit organizations these programs utilize assessment tools as their own learning tools and resources, to assist creating exceptional action plans for the adult learner. Both agencies have formed working relationships with community partners to achieve family’s future successes.

CEDA and YMCA both offer health programs to benefit their families as a method of disease prevention and to increase nutrition knowledge (CEDA, 2017). At the YMCA, adult learners are educated on the importance of health and nutrition (YMCA, 2018). The program places great emphasis on prevention as a tool of ending chronic disease due to poor eating habits.  Various materials are provided to clients such as flyer information on proper portion sizes, how to budget on limited resources, prepare healthy meals for the week, and how to shop when there is only food deserts within the client's residence (YMCA, 2018). CEDA also provides nutrition education through their partnership with the University of Illinois Extension, but their program takes it a step further by providing fresh produce at local food banks. As an organization CEDA only works with low-income individuals. The awareness that CEDA has of the needs of their low-income population results in them not only providing education but also providing food for the individuals to be able to utilize the new knowledge, as well as gain new knowledge through experience with the healthy foods at home (CEDA, 2017).

By the same token the YMCA promotes prevention courses for health and wellness, job readiness, adult education classes to prepare adult learning on a consistent basis and not just on an urgency matter.  The YMCA, provides adults with tools on how to make revenue and the ability to perform in a professional manner with support of their social service department (YMCA, 2018). In similar fashion, CEDA builds capacity in support of adult learners based on their critical need for food, employment, and emergency energy assistance.  Based upon CEDA and YMCA programs mission statements both have strategically planned to support their families by providing adequate assistance in servicing adult learners.

Implications

CEDA has the community at the front and center of the organization, with importance put on the goal of assisting low-income and impoverished residents obtain self-sufficiency and higher quality of life. They actively work with the community to provide what the community needs - be it assistance on bills, job trainings, or even job placement opportunities. CEDA has integrated itself into the community through grass-root efforts and has worked endlessly to give residents the opportunity to thrive.

A lot can be learned from CEDA when it comes to providing informal adult education. To benefit a community you must first understand the needs of the community - which is exactly what CEDA does. Instead of creating a fill in the blank option, where every resident was provided the exact same assistance, CEDA built its organization to allow for customization - to allow residents to get what they need. As well as customizing to communities, CEDA helps people from start to finish. They provide assistance on past-due bills, set up trainings to help residents become job ready, and then work with the residents to obtain employment. It would be easy for CEDA to throw money at the problem and stop at bill assistance, but they see the process through to the end to ensure residents needing bill assistance is only a one time thing. When it comes to educating adults - it’s important to provide the whole package - give them assistance and then show them how to help themselves in the future. Breaking the cycle of poverty in communities has to start somewhere and CEDA has done a great job of helping Cook County, Illinois do just that.

Table 1. Summary of Adult Education Organizations and Programs

References

About United Way Born Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved April 01, 2018, from http://www.bornlearning.org/about-us

Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County. (2017). Community action plan 2018. Retrieved from http://www.cedaorg.net/www2/Assets/2018CAPPlanrev.pdf

Employment program - CEDA CSBG. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.cedaorg.net/www2/Assets/RFPs/RFQ_121714.pdf

Our history. (2018, March 25). Retrieved from https://www.unitedway.org/about/history

Our mission / United Way Worldwide. (n.d.) Retrieved March 25, 2018, from https://www.unitedway.org/ourimpact/mission

Our mission, goals and values. (2018, March 25). Retrieved from https://www.monroeunitedway.org/mission

Our partners | United Way Worldwide. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2018 from https://www.unitedway.org/nfl/our-partners

Kasworm, C. E., Rose, A. D., & Ross-Gordon, J. M. (2010). Handbook of adult and continuing education. Los Angeles: SAGE.

McLeod, S. A. (2017). Kolb - learning styles. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html

Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

United Way Worldwide. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2018, from https://www.unitedway.org/

YMCA. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2018, from http://www.ymca.net/