The Key Element’s of an Afterschool Program

A Place to Grow and Learn presented early insights into how cities were going about the work of building afterschool systems. Since then, Wallace’s (Wallace Foundation) work with the original five cities in its system-building initiative has wound down, and in 2012, the foundation launched a “next generation” of the initiative to assist nine cities — Baltimore, Denver, Fort Worth, Grand Rapids, Jacksonville, Louisville, Nashville, Philadelphia and St. Paul — that had already begun to build systems of their own. The efforts of these and other cities, as well as a large body of research published in recent years, have helped us to renew our understanding. In this report, we focus on the four components of system building that the most current evidence and experience suggest are essential to a successful effort.