Welcome to the Core Team!
You have joined A Way Home Washington's Anchor Community Initiative (ACI) Core Team. We are so inspired that you are committed to ending Youth and Young Adult Homelessness and excited to utilize your skills and expertise to achieve our goal. This is a guide to update you on best practices, expectations and progress.
A Way Home Washington and ACI Facts:
The ACI is a project of A Way Home Washington. Our goal is to end youth and young adult homelessness in four communities across Washington State by reaching functional zero or “Yes to Yes” by the end of 2022.
Our focus population is youth and young adults (YYA) who are unaccompanied by a parent or guardian and between the ages of 12-24 years old.
Our definition of homelessness includes young people experiencing unsheltered and sheltered homelessness and those who are staying with others (doubled up/couchsurfing) in situations that are unsafe and/or unstable.
We coach communities to use system-level data and continuous quality improvement methodology to plan and implement small tests of change that will reduce and end YYA homelessness.
We believe that we cannot end youth and young adult homelessness without young people’s expertise and leadership. We strive to center young people with lived experience as experts and integral team members in all of our work.
We are data-driven and focused on racial/LGBTQ+ equity. We include measures on ending disproportionality in our definition of functional zero.
Four Stages of Ending YYA Homelessness
Quality, real-time and person specific data
Reducing Youth and Young Adult Homelessness
Ending Youth and Young Adult Homelessness
Sustaining Functional Zero
What’s your role?
Regularly attend bi-weekly ACI Core Team Meetings
Commit to ACI and your Core Team’s goals and utilize your organizational resources to achieve them
Adhere to the youth and young adult engagement Gold Standard by recognizing young people who have experienced homelessness as experts.
Be a team player and take ownership to get work done
Be open-minded and unafraid of creativity
Check out the Resource Hub for more info!
The Resource Hub is a collection of case studies and best practices. It hosts all Anchor Communities’ Tableau dashboards.
Here’s your essential reading list:
The dashboards have a password to ensure that only people connected to the work can access them. Please contact Zane (zellis@awayhomewa.org) for the password. We maintain a culture of using data for improvement, not for shaming. In this spirit, as a Core Team member you may share the password with anyone you wish. ACI staff will not provide the password to press and media without seeking the community's permission first.