Neighborhood participants in a month-long effort to develop ideas for improving opportunities for children and youth outside the classroom will report their ideas from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2, at the Willie Hinton Neighborhood Resource Center at 3805 W. 12th St.

The Action Forum is the next step in the 2010 Study Circles Project, a community-wide effort to extend learning for children and youth outside of school in central Little Rock.

Julie Hall, director of UALR’s University District Educational Network, helped coordinate the project, which included a series of community conversations that took place from Nov. 2 to 20. The study circles — small groups of diverse people that meet four times to participate in a facilitated discussion — gave neighbors opportunities to discuss ways to foster learning outside school hours.

Study Circle participants have been discussing:

• What is it like to be a young person today?
• What challenges do young people face in our community?
• What does a community where all young people are thriving look like?
• What can neighbors and other interested community partners do?

Those ideas will be discussed at the Dec. 2 Action Forum. Contact Hall at 501-569-3187 for more information.

“We will hear reports from the three Study Circle discussion groups who have been tackling these questions and create an action plan for the community,” Hall said.

The community dialogue is a project that complements the Central Little Rock Promise Neighborhood effort, which UALR, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Central Arkansas Library System, City of Little Rock, Little Rock School District, and New Futures for Youth are spearheading.

Earlier this year, UALR and its local partners received one of only 21 highly competitive Promise Neighborhoods planning grants announced from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. UALR was one of only three higher education institutions to receive the grant.

Hall said the $430,000 grant and the $219,000 committed in matching funds will help create Central Little Rock Promise Neighborhood. The area is bounded by Interstate 630 on the north, Boyle Park on the west, Fourche Creek Bottoms on the south, and Martin Luther King Drive on the east. UALR and other partners in the grant will create plans to provide cradle-to-career services that improve the educational achievement and healthy development of children.

The grant will focus on students who attend Bale, Franklin, and Stephens elementary schools; Forest Heights Middle School; and Hall High School.

The start-up grant will give UALR and its partners a year to plan for a program aimed at replicating the kind of private-public partnerships that made the Harlem Children’s Zone a model to provide children in the neighborhood “whatever it takes” to raise them up from babyhood to career.