  STAFF NEWS Tanya Beer, Assistant Director of Research, Evaluation & Strategic Learning for The Colorado Trust, was invited by the Office of Lt. Governor Barbara O'Brien to serve on Colorado's Early Childhood Council Advisory Team Evaluation Subcommittee to help plan a statutorily required evaluation of the early childhood system in 2010. Beer also serves on the national Advisory Group on Learning for Results for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and will participate in the Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation National Convening sponsored by The California Endowment, Annie E. Casey Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies. This forum for advocates, evaluators and funders provides the opportunity to share lessons, tools and resources about funding and evaluating advocacy. Deidre Johnson, Program Officer for The Colorado Trust, was selected by the Office of Lt. Governor Barbara O'Brien to serve on Colorado's Early Childhood State Partners Task Force. Guided by the Early Childhood Colorado Framework, the task force was given the short-term charge of developing action steps to update the state-level, early childhood systems strategic plan. Some action steps include building political will to support early childhood systems development; supporting cross-sector public and private partnerships to eliminate duplication of services, and to ensure that more children and families receive comprehensive services; and creating a cross-agency data warehouse to track historical and ongoing data, such as benchmarks, service delivery and outcomes. |