The American Museum of Natural History's Youth Initiatives program is hosting a Preparing Strong College Applications workshop for youth and families on Saturday, November 21, 2015 from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm. The workshop will take place at 200 Central Park West, New York, NY and will focus on what colleges look for in successful applications, tips for writing a winning admissions essay and avoiding common pitfalls, and how to craft an overall application that gets noticed for all the right reasons. Pre-registration is not required but highly suggested.

National Girls Collaborative Project is collaborating with the Educational Research Center of America, Destination Imagination, and National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity on research focused on high school students' perceptions of STEM careers. High school educators will receive a package of student surveys for students to complete and instructions related to this research effort. To receive the surveys, send an email to info@studentresearch.org with your name, high school name, and mailing address with the subject line: STEM Career Survey.

In October, as part of Hispanic Heritage Month, Harvard Family Research Project highlighted research, teaching tools, and program practices from many Hispanic/Latino educators and their colleagues. These resources provided a deeper insight into family engagement that promotes pathways to college for Latino youth and focused on three categories: Promoting Family Engagement in Early Childhood; Guidance and Advocacy in the School Years; and Shared Responsibility on the Pathway to College.

Achieving collective impact requires all partners to clearly understand collaborative work and how partnerships improve conditions in communities. The Forum for Youth Investment and FSG are teaming up to help communities effectively carry out collective impact strategies. Achieving Collective Impact: How Partnerships Change Community Outcomes, a three-day institute on December 1 - 3, 2015, provides a survey of five key steps in collaborative work and how these steps put partnerships on a clear path to improving lives. Participants will learn how to take a Big Picture Approach to tackle a range of issues in their communities, focusing on how to apply the nuts and bolts of collective impact strategies back home. The institute will take place in Washington, D.C. Registration is required.

The Search Institute has released a new study, Don't Forget the Families: The Missing Piece in America's Effort to Help All Children Succeed. This study of 1,085 parenting adults of 3-13 year olds from across the United States found that the quality of parent-child relationships is 10 times more powerful than demographics (race, ethnicity, family composition, and family income) in predicting whether children are developing critical character strengths they need for success in school and life. A recording of a webinar on the study, presented by study co-author Gene Roehlkepartain, Ph.D., Vice President, Research and Development at Search Institute is also available.

From 2012-2015, Global Action Project, Data Center and Research Action Design conducted a national research project, Media in Action: A Field Scan of Media & Youth Organizing in the United States. The project sought to understand how youth organizers are using media to advance social justice and movement-building work throughout the United States. The research documents how and why youth organizers are using media for organizing, framing community stories, and conducting media analysis.