by SHARE New Mexico and Santa Fe Community Foundation

Santa Fe - An initiative aimed to improve early childhood, educational, and career opportunities for Santa Fe’s children and youth, called the Santa Fe Birth to Career Collaboration (“SF B2C”), has quietly been in the works for over a year. The website for the initiative is now officially online – offering a wealth of information on data, resources, and collaborations to support the whole community to work better together and improve outcomes.

“It started with leaders from Santa Fe Public Schools, Santa Fe Community College, United Way of Santa Fe County and Santa Fe Community Foundation coming together in late 2013 to explore how we can work together to improve educational outcomes for children and families in Santa Fe,” said Jerry Jones, Interim President and CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation. From the beginning, the question “What can we achieve together that we cannot do on our own?” was at the core of ongoing discussions among the partners, and endured through leadership transitions at both the College and the Foundation. 

Today, the partnership has grown, with SF B2C working closely with Mayor Javier Gonzales’ newly established Children, Youth and Families Community Cabinet to help align outcome priorities and action plans for Santa Fe’s youth. Early on, collaboration members agreed on the shared vision of “birth to career success” for all Santa Fe children, families, and communities by achieving successful transitions across early childhood, K-12, post-secondary and career; improving the well-being of vulnerable children and families; and providing equity in opportunities. 

Based on data analysis in partnership with the UNM Center for Education Policy Research, SF B2C also identified priority “opportunity places” in Santa Fe where there are critical gaps in resources and achievement. These places include three neighborhoods – Airport, Agua Fria, and Midtown Triangle – encompassing 13 census tracts and 11 schools, as well as the areas covered by The Early Learning Center and the 1Santa Fe Initiative (formerly known as Southside Quality of Life Initiative).

“Since the early partnership and community convening, there has been a clear recognition that for the community stakeholders to effectively align and coordinate their efforts, we needed a better way to share data, learn about existing resources and collaborations, and communicate with each other the progress and learning,” said Joohee Rand, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Santa Fe Community Foundation, which currently provides “backbone support” for the collaboration. That recognition led to the formation of a Data Team and the development of an online platform where information can easily be shared between partners and made available to the public.

The website for the initiative, which can be found at www.santafeb2c.org or www.sharenm.org/santafeb2c, was designed to support data-driven strategies, collective actions, and continuous learning as a community. For development of the website, SF B2C partnered with SHARE New Mexico to build on SHARE’s existing statewide platform that consolidates public and private sector information on a wide range of issues and resources.

On the SF B2C website, users will find links to a Data Hub, Resource Hub, and a Collaboration Hub.   The Data Hub provides easy access to interactive dashboards across a broad areas of issues, data spotlights, and useful reports and websites for research. The Resource Hub, developed on the SHARE New Mexico platform, provides a directory of organizations, programs, and services for individuals, families, and the community. The Collaboration Hub, also developed on SHARE New Mexico, offers opportunities to learn about and connect with various collaborative working groups and initiatives in Santa Fe focused on birth to career outcomes.  

“These Santa Fe resources are exactly the type of information SHARE New Mexico was built to house. We’re always looking for opportunities to provide data and resources that help others work better together and make a difference in New Mexico,” said Debi Randall, Executive Director of SHARE New Mexico.