Message from the ED: The End of Summer . . . a Time of Transition

August is a month of transition at Asian American LEAD.  Summer programs end and there’s a brief pause before school-year after-school programs begin.

During this pause, we typically hold our yearly Staff Retreat before staff take the opportunity for vacation time before the fall.  This year was no exception – we had several days for a great staff retreat with fun team-building and thoughtful planning for the year ahead.

Central to our staff retreat was discussion of the strategic plan we began implementing last year.  Our strategic plan has 4 main goals:

– Serve more youth in need

– Fuel our growth through individual donors

– Strengthen our performance management culture

– Sustain a healthy organization

We reviewed our progress toward these goals and toward the outcomes of Educational Empowerment, Identity Development, and Leadership in our youth.
Here are some highlights:

– We increased youth served from 330 last year to over 450 this year!

– We have added many more individual donors, including through our Aspire to LEAD Giving Society, and will be launching more ways to get involved this fall.

– Not only are we serving more youth, but we are serving them better.  Keo Xiong, our MD Program Manager, began training our staff during the retreat on our new performance management data system, called Apricot.  Staff are excited about data!

– 70% of youth reported at the end of the year, “because of AALEAD, I have more educational goals and know how to achieve them”.

– 74% reported “AALEAD has helped me to be more confident”.

– 82% reported “AALEAD has exposed me to other cultures besides my own and helped me to see similarities”.

As we approach September, we are also adding several new hires to support our expansion into new programming.  And we are excited to be launching a new website and opening a new Virginia office!  Stay tuned!