159 - Together for impact: Working with community organizations to design programs for systemically-marginalized youth visiting Oregon Zoo

Abstract Information: In 2024, the Zoo Apprenticeship Program (ZAP) at Oregon Zoo is celebrating its 25th year. ZAP, part of the zoo’s education team, employs low-income youth and youth of color, who provide on-grounds experiences for a diverse range of community groups. While the program has undergone small changes in the course of its history, it shifted significantly as the zoo emerged from COVID-19 closures. Historically, ZAP youth went into the community to present educational programs; now, community organizations visit Oregon Zoo for an all-inclusive, ZAP-led guided program at no charge to participating organizations. Though this shift was more out of necessity from an internal perspective, the idea of offering guided tours originated from a community organization pre-pandemic, and therefore felt like a logical direction to lean into given that a new direction was required. The pivot to on-grounds guided tours, while community-inspired, was quick and the ZAP team was “building the plane while flying it” and still operating at 25% pre-pandemic capacity. As the education team has now rebuilt with a program impact focus, we are looking to re-shape the ZAP-led programs with intentionality and community input. This poster will highlight how the ZAP coordinator and program impact manager collaborated to answer the evaluation question: What does our community want from a guided, all-inclusive, experience? How does the education team, and ZAP in particular, meet those needs with the resources we have available? Community organizations were invited to join in conversation with us and participate in activities to help us answer these questions. Through this evaluation we sought to understand community organizations’ goals for participating in ZAP-led programs, how the zoo can support those goals, the desired experiences of ZAP guided tours, and how we might collect outcomes-based data that is mutually beneficial and culturally relevant. We will present (1) the methods and results from the meetings with community organizations, (2) how findings were used to inform program design, a logic model, and embedded assessments, (3) findings from the embedded assessments piloted in summer 2024, and (4) next steps in the evaluation and our ongoing conversations with participating community organizations. Participating community organizations serve diverse populations of the Portland metro area, including youth experiencing low-income and houselessness, refugees, native youth, and people of color. These organization’s missions seek to advance equity in education, provide outdoor experiences, and mentor youth in careers. Recognizing that community organizations, and therefore the people they serve, are not a monolith, attendees will hear how we grappled with aggregating data while acknowledging the individuality (n=1) of community organization goals and desired outcomes. This session will also explore our staff’s diverse perspectives and levels of experience in evaluation, and how that influenced this evaluation.