PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Positive Out of School Time (POST) was designated as a major priority for the University of Minnesota Extension Service this past year. This strong need for POST will be greatly addressed through the New Communities Project's (NCP) where our goal is to actively work to improve community involvement, educational quality, and educational outreach for youth and their families during non-school hours. In making community sites selections we wanted to directly connect the work of the POST priority area with the objectives of the community sites and focus our owrk on reaching new immigrant families. We conducted an environmental scan of our system and concluded that we had experienced Extension Educators that had already built relationships with new immigrant comminities. The Twin Cities and Rochester areas have had the largest increase in immigrant populations since the last census. As a result, we selected these areas as our three sites.