Founded in 1961, AED is an independent, nonprofit organization committed to solving critical social problems in the U.S. and throughout the world through education, social marketing, research, training, policy analysis and innovative program design and management.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is responsible for Federal programs that promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities. ACF oversees and finances a broad range of activities in partnership with state, local and tribal governmental agencies.

• Office of Community Services (OCS)
  The mission of the Office of Community Services is to work in partnership with states, communities, and other agencies to provide a range of human and economic development services and activities.  The aim of these services and activities is to increase the capacity of individuals and families to become self-sufficient, to revitalize communities, and to build the stability and capacity of children, youth, and families so that they become able to create their own opportunities.
• Programs
  Looking for general information about Federal programs serving children and families?  On this page you will find links to information on the programs overseen by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF).
• Fact Sheets
  Information on ACF program activities.

The Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) administers the major Federal programs that support: social services that promote the positive growth and development of children and youth and their families; protective services and shelter for children and youth in at-risk situations; child care for working families and families on public assistance; and adoption for children with special needs.

• Resource Fair
  Share Information about after-school programs (child care, sports, lessons, camps, volunteer and entrepreneurial opportunities) for youth in your community; provide information about grant money, program ideas and field trip destinations to program providers; or get federal, state, and local representatives and program providers talking.

• Education Reform
  In 1999, the Foundation undertook a new initiative called Making Connections, based in 22 cities/neighborhoods across the US This initiative is driven by a simple premise: children succeed when their families are strong, and families get stronger when they live in neighborhoods that help them make connections to three things: economic opportunities, social networks, and public supports and services.
• Casey Family Services
  Casey Family Services is a fully licensed and accredited non-profit child welfare agency providing a broad range of programs to meet the changing needs of vulnerable children and families. Casey has established a number of specialized and innovative community-based programs to help strengthen families and enable parents to provide the healthy, nurturing environments their children need to grow and thrive.
• KIDSCOUNT
  KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the US By providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state, and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all children.
• Neighborhood Transformation—Family Development
  Children do well when their families do well, and families do better when they live in supportive neighborhoods.  This effort seeks to build on and unify our grant making on behalf of disadvantaged children and families, intertwining the best that we and others have learned from the fields of family support, economic development, system reform, and community building.
• Assessing the New Federalism
  Assessing the New Federalism is a multi-year Urban Institute research project to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, job training, and social services.
• Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families
  The Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families is a resource center for journalists who cover the social issues, policies and institutions affecting children and families in America.
• Children and Family Fellowship
  The Annie E. Casey Foundation believes that one essential step toward reforming these child and family services systems — and enabling communities to transform themselves — is fostering the capacity of individuals to lead institutions and systems toward more effective responses to the needs of disadvantaged children and families.  The Casey Foundation created the Children and Family Fellowship, an 11-month leadership development program for mid-career professionals.

• Community Youth Mapping
  This initiative involves young people gathering information by locating and documenting in a given locality, "places to go and things to do." These young people canvass neighborhoods block-by-block, in search of the programs, services, opportunities and caring adults available to them and their peers.
• Kellogg Youth Initiatives Partnerships Project
  The purpose of KYIP is to build partnerships between the Foundation and communities in the three sites to promote positive youth, adult and community outcomes related to youth development.
• Transformational Community Development with Youth as Full Partners
  This three-year initiative is a three-way collaboration between the Center, the National Network for Youth and the National 4-H Council. The purpose of this initiative is to create an integrated local program model that links youth and community development through civic engagement activities for young people.
• Youth Development Mobilization
  This initiative is focused on helping to create an infrastructure at the local level—crossing the areas of policy, program and practice—to ensure long-term, institutional support for youth development.

Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that studies children, youth, and families through research, data collection, and data analysis.

The CYFAR Program is based on research on effective programs for at-risk youth and families and on the human ecological principle of working across the lifespan in the context of the family and community. To assure that critical needs of children and families are met, CYFAR supports comprehensive, intensive, community-based programs developed with active citizen participation in all phases. CYFAR promotes building resiliency and protective factors in youth, families and communities.

The Coalition is a partnership of entities from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors collaborating to focus attention and resources on improving the health and quality of life of communities through community-based development.  A primary focus of the Coalition is to promote the initiation, development and sustainability of initiatives that result in healthy people and healthy communities. We promote these initiatives at the local, regional, state and national levels-- particularly those with a focus on the well-being of families and children.

In cooperation with our partners and customers, CSREES provides the focus to advance a global system of research, extension and higher education in the food and agricultural sciences and related environmental and human sciences to benefit people, communities, and the Nation.

• Community Mobilization Forums
  The Community Mobilization Forum (CM Forum) is designed to give you the information you need to begin or enhance community mobilization efforts to improve the quality of life for children and families in your state or community.
• FWI Speaks
  An exciting new speaking program designed to improve the quality of family, work and community life.  Presentations that engage, cause reflection, and inspire change.  Presentations are for decision makers including parents, educators, business and community leaders and public policy makers.

Family Support America, formerly Family Resource Coalition of America, promotes family support as the nationally recognized movement to strengthen and support families and places the principles of family support practice at the heart of every setting in which children and families are present.

• Funding Opportunities
• Legislative and Policy Alerts
• Advocacy Articles
• Know Your Policy Makers

• Healthy Communities Initiatives
  We assist communities to build collaborative plans between citizens, government, non-profits and business and we promote decision-making that includes all segments of the community.  To this end, we offer the following services: speeches; training in healthy communities principles, skills and tools; design and facilitation of long-term healthy communities initiatives; and connection to a national network of healthy communities innovators at the local, state and national levels.
• New Politics Program (NPP)
  The National Civic League established the New Politics Program (NPP) to recognize and promote innovative political reforms implemented across the country at the state and local level. The New Politics Program connects with the National Civic League philosophy that all major political reform begins at the local level, eventually building irresistible momentum for national reform.
• Alliance for National Renewal (ANR)
  The Alliance for National Renewal (ANR) is a coalition of over 200 national and local organizations dedicated to the principles of community renewal.  A catalyst for inspiring and helping citizens work together to improve their communities and thus, our nation, ANR offers assistance to communities that want to start community renewal alliances; access to a network of people who believe in taking back our nation, neighborhood by neighborhood; a collection of stories on successful community renewal efforts; and inspiration, ideas, tools and collaborative processes shared through conferences, publications, technical assistance, and the World Wide Web.

• NGA Center for Best Practices
  The Center provides Governors with tools, information, and ideas to provide innovative, cost-effective services to the people of our states.
• Extra Learning Activities
  Extra Learning Opportunities (ELOs) provide school-age children (ages five to eighteen) with recreational, academic, and development opportunities supplementing the education provided in a typical school day.
• Maternal and Child Health
  The public programs that address the health and well-being of pregnant women and children cut across multiple agencies and have multiple federal and state funding streams. The Governor has the unique role of directing multiple agencies and programs in the planning, coordination, and evaluation of services for this population. Governors also work closely with the private sector and the business community on initiatives to improve health status and strengthen families.

NNCC unites the expertise of many of the nation's leading universities through the outreach system of Cooperative Extension. Our goal is to share knowledge about children and child care from the vast resources of the landgrant universities with parents, professionals, practitioners, and the general public. We network with committed individuals around the country to bring you practical information and resources that will be useful to you in your everyday work with children.

• kidcare
  An e-mail listserve - providing a way to communicate nationally and internationally with others who care about children and child care.
• Connections Newsletter
  National Network for Child Care publishes three newsletter series, issued four times a year, for family child care, center-based care, and school-age child care.

Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and citizen education organization based in New York City.  The two-fold mission of Public Agenda is to help leaders better understand the public's point of view on major policy issues, and to help citizens better understand critical policy issues so they can make their own informed and thoughtful decisions.

• Education
  Research studies on education.
• Children and Families
  Research studies on children and families.

• Healthy Communities—Healthy Youth
  In 1996, Search Institute launched a national Healthy Communities - Healthy Youth (HC-HY) initiative to support communities in their work. Based on Search Institute's framework of developmental assets this initiative seeks to motivate and equip individuals, organizations, and their leaders to join together in nurturing competent, caring, and responsible children and adolescents.
• Assets for Colorado Youth
  Assets for Colorado Youth is a five-and-a-half-year statewide initiative designed to build developmental assets in young people throughout Colorado.  Their mission is to motivate, support, and learn with people and organizations in Colorado to take sustained action to build essential developmental assets for and with all children and adolescents.

A research and training center focused on the identification and mobilization of local community resources for development and problem solving purposes.

• Early Head Start National Resource Center
  Responsible for coordinating the provision of and training and technical assistance to the more than 400 Early Head Start Programs across the country.  Resource Center staff work in concert with several regionally-based organizations to offer assistance in a variety of areas, including: child development, family development, community building, staff development, program administration and management.