Are you looking for ways to spread the message of the Developmental Assets in your community? Why not work with your local media to do the job? Many Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth initiatives have worked with their local television stations, radio stations, and newspapers to spread the message of the assets. Here are five great examples from our archive of initiatives making strong connections with various media outlets.
1. Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth of Ada County in Boise, Idaho worked with their local television stations to create public service announcements about their initiative and the developmental assets. With assistance from news anchors at each of the local stations, Mayor Brent Coles, and other prominent community members, the advertisements encouraged citizens to make Idaho a great place to be young. Between January 2000 and July 2001, over 4,000 PSAs were aired, and it is estimated that they reached 50,000 community members each month.
2. Butler County, Ohio’s Family & Children First Council partnered with Cox Ohio Publishing to produce a 40-article series on the Developmental Assets. Each article highlighted one asset and told a human interest story about a personal or community-wide effort to build that asset in youth. Once the series was published, the Butler County Department of Job and Family Services provided funding to create and distribute a booklet containing all 40 news articles and other information about asset building.
Find out more about the Family & Children First Council
3. Multnomah County, Oregon’s Take the Time Initiative decided that in order to change the norms of their community, they needed to reach a wider audience than grants, school partnerships, and conferences would allow. With the help of area partners like The Oregonian newspaper, local radio and television stations, theaters, and bus ad companies, they created a large scale media campaign using nearly $2 million in in-kind donations of sponsorship and advertising space.
4. Many communities work with their local media affiliates to publicize results of Search Institute Surveys of community youth. A recent example of this includes The Journal in New Ulm, Minnesota, which published a four-article series reporting the findings of the Attitudes and Behaviors survey conducted in seven area public and private schools. The survey was supported by New Ulm’s local Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Initiative.
See the following articles from The Journal:
“What’s Up with Our Kids?”
“Survey: Youth Enjoy Support from Family”
“Youth ‘Crying out’ for Better Communication with Adults”
“Survey Yields Mixed Data on Change”
5. Alaska’s Spirit of Youth was formed in 1997 to address the growing negative image of teenagers in the media. Since then, hundreds of positive stories about Alaskan youth have spread through local television, radio, and newspapers. Youth are also active partners in Spirit of Youth and the Alaska Teen Media Institute. Check out their blog on the Anchorage Daily News Web site.
Learn more about Spirit of Youth
Read the Spirit of Youth blog
