As part of California’s Expanded Learning Ecosystem Plan process, we continue to deepen our statewide listening efforts through the pilot of the ExL Statewide Listening Toolkit: A Flexible Guide for Decolonized Data Collection and Collective Meaning-Making, launched in March 2026.

What is a Listening Strategy?

The listening strategy helps ensure our emerging strategic priorities are shaped by what youth, families, and the workforce are actually experiencing, needing, and imagining for the future. As we continue learning alongside California’s youth-serving ecosystem, we are adapting the toolkit and process in real time based on collective practice and community insight.

How to Participate?

One ongoing way to participate is through our monthly “Sound Waves,” which are short, low-lift reflection surveys designed to gather insights from across sectors and communities. Your responses help inform the strategies, partnerships, and conditions for care reflected in the Ecosystem Plan.

Participate in this month’s Sound Wave on the emerging strategic priority: “Thriving Workforce and Conditions for Care” HERE

We invite you to continue engaging and sharing the monthly “Sound Waves” within your networks as we collectively shape a plan grounded in “power with” leadership and community voice to shape the future of expanded learning in California.

Learn more about the Ecosystem Plan on our website: https://www.afterschoolnetwork.org/ecosystem-design-and-plan