Agoura Hills Family Learning Center

California Wellness Foundation Right Trak Project

The Wellness Foundation Grant represents a collaboration among the Wellness Foundation, Orange County United Way, the Orange County Department of Education, the Orange County District Attorney Office, the Orange County Probation Department, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tustin, Anaheim, and Santa Ana. The Wellness Foundation provides a 3-year funding cycle for the Boys & Girls Clubs to expand implementation of the Right Trak program. H•E•A•R•T in Education is the lead evaluator for this project, designing and conducting a process of continuous program improvement (formative), and program outcomes (summative). Our consultants publish reports regularly that communicate to share the results with stakeholders and potential funders for program sustainability.

Boys and Girls Clubs, Orange County

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Tustin and Santa Ana serve a diverse population by providing them with a positive and supportive environment. Our consultants have been providing the following services to these Boys and Girls Clubs: Program evaluation projects that are based on the programs’ theories of change. developing logic models, to write and develop grant applications for various youth development and prevention programs including, gang prevention, delinquency prevention, health & fitness, life-skills, and academic improvement and excellence. Additionally, our consultants design, facilitate, and manage comprehensive evaluation projects for many of these programs.

Skills Mastery and Resistance Training (SMART Moves)

The SMART Moves (Skills Mastery and Resistance Training) prevention/education program was developed by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America over 10 years ago and is currently implemented all over the country to address problems of drug and alcohol use and premature sexual activity amongst children and youth. Based on proven techniques, the program uses a team approach involving Club staff, peer leaders, parents and community representatives. The program teaches young people ages 6-15 how to say no by involving them in discussion and role-playing, practicing resistance and refusal skills, developing assertiveness, strengthening decision-making skills and analyzing media and peer influence. The ultimate goal: to promote abstinence from substance abuse and adolescent sexual involvement through the practice of responsible behavior. Numerous components have been developed to augment the basic SMART Moves curriculum and target specific audiences. Act SMART, Street SMART, and SMART Girls are some of the program components that have been developed to target prevention for specific audiences. Consultants at Consultant’s at H•E•A•R•T. in Education have been solely responsible for conducting the improvement-oriented state-wide evaluation of the SMART Moves program since 2001.

NVC in Schools

The Center for Nonviolent Communication™ (CNVC) is a global organization whose vision is a world where all people are getting their needs met and resolving their conflicts peacefully. Compassionate Communication training and practice in school communities helps teachers, administrators, students, and parents to make school a place where students love to learn, teachers love to teach, and where parents feel confident that their children’s needs—for safety, respect, and learning—can be met. Hundreds of schools around the world have been introduced to NVC. In many of these schools, teachers, administrators, parents, and students have used NVC and reported fewer conflicts, increased skill in mediating conflicts, more listening, mutual respect, greater personal responsibility, more engaged learning, less resistance and more cooperation, and greater sense of physical and emotional safety. Our consultants have contributed to the evaluation of the NVC in Schools project here in the United States, as well as collaborating with NVC trainers in Israel, Sweden, and Australia.

Eagles Peak Charter School

Eagles Peak Charter School is a parent choice school where the community is the classroom. Their mission is to foster the innate curiosity of students, empower their parents, and promote optimum learning by collaboratively developing a personalized learning program for each student. They believe that students learn differently from one another and require different curricula and teaching methods to most fully develop their potentials. H•E•A•R•T in Education consultants provide training for parents and teachers in the area of creating Compassionate Classrooms and Nonviolent Communication.

The Collaborative After School Project, Cal Poly Pomona

The Collaborative After School Project located at the California Polytechnic, Pomona, has been providing training and technical assistance in the school-age care and after school field in California for over a decade. The Project is dedicated to fostering developmentally-oriented learning experiences for children and youth during the after school hours.

Consultant’s at H•E•A•R•T in Education have taken leadership in the project’s primary activities, including:

	Development of curriculum and program resources, including the development and publication of numerous program curriculum and College Student Guides;
	Training and Technical Assistance; and
	Program Evaluation.

Desired Results Developmental Profiles

Consultants at H•E•A•R•T in Education have worked closely with the California Department of Education (CDE), Child Development Division, in their efforts to develop a research-based, empirically driven, outcomes-based assessment instrument for school-age care programs. Desired Results for Children and Families is a system by which educators document children’s progress in achieving desired results using specially designed and research-based Developmental Profiles. This project is being coordinated with Desired Results: Access for Children with Disabilities Project (DR Access) to ensure that the desired results system is based is applicable to all settings in which children with disabilities and their families are served.

Our consultants have been involved in the development of the DRDP for school-age programs and delivery of comprehensive training efforts designed to facilitate implementation of the desired results system in programs throughout California!

California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC)

The California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC) is the only statewide advocacy organization representing school-age professionals in California CalSAC provides over 30 training events throughout California annually, giving after-school professionals the skills and resources they need to deliver high-quality care. Consultant’s at H•E•A•R•T in Education have worked extensively with CalSAC to provide afterschool professionals with the training and technical assistance they need to deliver high quality, affordable after-school care. Additionally, we have served on the Executive Board of Directors for this organization since 2000, helping to articulate the mission and vision of the organization, contributing to the strategic plan, and advocating for the professionals in the after-school field, and the children that they serve.

Institutions of Higher Education

Drs. Brenda and Itamar Harari have been affiliated with numerous universities, including University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Irvine; University of California, Berkeley; California State Polytechnic, Pomona; Cambridge College; and University of Phoenix, Online.