Defining an After-School System

In his 2003 paper, The Challenge of System-Building in the After-School Field: Lessons From Experience, Robert Halpern provides a good working definition of such a system as "...all the institutions that have a stake in after-school programming within some defined geographic boundary (providers, funders, regulators, resource organizations, and families themselves); the policies, procedures, regulations, initiatives, and norms shaping the behavior, interactions and relationships among these institutions; and, perhaps, the resource base for providing and supporting after-school program-ming," (Halpern, 2003).