Supporting Youth Under Threat: Out-of-School Time Monthly Field Convening

March 21, 2025, 12:00 pm ET

Supporting Youth Under Threat: Protecting Program Spaces, Using Trauma-Informed Practices and Centering Youth Voice and Leadership

As we navigate the rapidly changing federal landscape, what steps can OST programs take to ensure their spaces are safe and supportive for youth under threat, including undocumented youth, LGBTQIA youth and youth with other targeted identities? And how can we identify the opportunities – amid the many threats – to embrace an affirmative vision of learning and development ecosystems centering youth voice and well-being in our communities?

Join the Out-of-School Time Impact Group for this important discussion.

Resources

You can request access to the video recording of this event by emailing impactgroups@edfunders.org.

Please click here for additional resources from the program.

About the Speakers

Manuela Arciniegas
Executive Director
Communities for Just Schools Fund

Manuela Arciniegas brings more than 20 years of experience in the racial justice nonprofit sector, ensuring young people and women from low-income communities grow as leaders and have the opportunity to hold their governments to account and step into their most powerful social, cultural, political and spiritual lives.

Manuela was previously the Program Officer for Ford Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership on the Civic Engagement and Government Team, where she stewarded over $60M+ in grants supporting organizations growing the civic participation and power of emerging leaders, including youth of color, LGBTQI+, Disability Justice, Immigration, Education Justice, Youth Justice, and other intersectional issues. Prior to her tenure at Ford, Manuela was director of the Andrus Family Fund, overseeing a grantmaking portfolio advancing policy, community organizing, direct service and capacity building for organizations serving youth advocating for change nationwide including Puerto Rico. She has additionally served as a grantmaker and community organizer across issues, including environmental justice, narrative change, arts and culture and education access.

Manuela is a funder organizer and the founder of the Visionary Freedom Fund, and has served as co-chair of Funders for Justice and on the advisory board of the Youth First State Advocacy Fund, the Youth Engagement Fund, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizing, the Youth Organizing and Cultural Change Fund, Filantropia PR, and Funders for Justice. She is a cultural arts organizer and is the founder and director of an all-women’s Afro-Puerto Rican and Dominican folk drumming troupe, Legacy Women and a performer and manager of Afro-Puerto Rican bomba ensemble Alma Moyo. A proud mother of 4, Manuela is pursuing a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center in Ethnomusicology focused on the role of Afro-Cuban religious music and power.

She is a selected participant of the Soros Social Justice Fellowship and New York Humanities Fellowship and a recipient of prizes from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the New York State Council of the Arts, along with being recognized with the Kennedy Center’s Next 50 cultural leadership award.

Adaku Onyeka-Crawford
Program Director
Advancement Project

Adaku Onyeka-Crawford is the Program Director for the Opportunity to Learn Program at Advancement Project, which envisions a future where Black, Latine, and other students of color experience a liberatory education system: one where they have self-determination, power, dignity, and freedom. Adaku has dedicated her career to public service and social justice, including strengthening protections against discrimination in schools at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, combatting school pushout for girls of color at the National Women’s Law Center, and connecting low-income families to housing, job-training, and summer learning programs at the Chicago Housing Authority. Adaku holds a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Leidy Robledo
Co-Director
Alliance for Educational Justice

Leidy Robledo has been organizing and supporting young people and youth organizers in the movement for educational justice for over 15 years. As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, she carries forward the legacy of the struggle for communal land, known as Ejidos in Mexico. Leidy recognizes that the right to land and dignity is fundamental to the freedom of a people. In middle school Leidy was already organizing walkouts to protest injustices within her school. In her journey from a youth leader to a youth organizer at Padres & Jóvenes Unidos (now Movimiento Poder), Leidy was rooted in the belief that Black and Brown communities deserve the right to self-determination and control over the systems and institutions within our communities, particularly our schools. Leidy has led numerous campaigns, from advocating for immigrant student rights to ending the school-to-prison pipeline and fighting for school budgets. She was also involved in launching Cops Outta Campus, one of the earliest efforts to remove police from schools and helped establish the National Campaign for Police Free Schools. Leidy continues to share her knowledge and experiences as a youth organizer by serving as the Co-Director of the Alliance for Educational Justice.

Kiara Alvarez, PhD, EdM
Assistant Professor
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Kiara Alvarez, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a licensed psychologist and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her work focuses on mental health equity for children, adolescents, and young adults. She has particular interests in the prevention of suicidal behavior; the integration of behavioral health care across clinical, school, and community settings; and the mental health and well-being of Latinx and immigrant youth and their families. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the William T. Grant Foundation. Dr. Alvarez completed her psychology internship training at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and received her doctorate from the APA-accredited School Psychology program at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, she was a faculty member in the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She holds an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Literature from Harvard University. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Prevention Research and the steering committee of the Youth Suicide Research Consortium.

About the Series

Join the EdFunders Out-of-School Time Impact Group for an ongoing conversation with funders, practitioners and other field leaders centered on learning about and with the out-of-school time sector, focusing on essential issues in OST now and in the future. Each video call will dive into a specific content area, challenge, and/or opportunity for the field and feature experts in the sector and philanthropy.

Register once for the ongoing series and join as your schedule allows. Already registered? We’ll send you a reminder of your meeting access beforehand.

Calls are scheduled from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET on the third Friday of each month.

See video and resources from past calls in the event archive.