Search Institute

During the spring of 2010, the Georgetown Project and the Rotary Club of Georgetown, in partnership with Youth Serve America, put the spotlight on youth organizations in Georgetown, Texas through a collaboration called the Semester of Service Youth Engagement Initiative.MORE

The congregation of Ascension Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota is a diverse mix of African, African American, Caucasian, and Latino members. The Latino population is a growing group of young families; the church currently has 450 registered families and estimates that close to 400 individuals in the church speak Spanish.

Responding to the growing Latino population, the church saw a need to assist Spanish-speaking parents with navigating parenting in a new culture.MORE

How do you bring the asset message to members of your community who don’t speak English? This is a question that Colorado’s statewide Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth initiative, Assets for Colorado Youth, has been trying to answer since 1997.

Assets for Colorado Youth (ACY) started as a grant-making organization, giving money to community groups who had creative ideas using the Developmental Assets framework. ACY focused their efforts on communities with large ethnic minority groups across Colorado and much of their early learning came from these communities.

“Colorado has a growing non-English-speaking population who speak many different languages, but our biggest success has been with the Spanish-speaking population,” says Assets for Colorado Youth executive director Stephanie Hoy.MORE

Do you know your neighbors? If you live in West Allis, chances are you’ve met them at a National Night Out event. For over 20 years, the 60,000 residents of the small Wisconsin city have had the opportunity to participate in this annual crime prevention event.

Learn more about National Night Out

National Night Out is an event that brings community members together to interact with and find out about the services provided by the police, fire, public works, and health departments.MORE

Summer is the perfect time to take asset building to the streets of your community. Children are out of school and families are already outside enjoying the nice weather, so get your initiative or organization to host an event that brings neighbors together to meet one another, have fun, and learn about the assets. Don’t have time or resources to plan an event? Get involved at a local fair, parade, or festival to reach out to your community or just start serving lemonade and cookies to the kids on your block. Build assets and enjoy all that summer has to offer at the same time! Here are four great examples of communities celebrating and spreading the asset message.

Ice Cream Social (Children First of St. Louis Park, Minnesota)

This event is hosted at a local park and includes free ice cream from a local ice cream shop (with their very own Children First flavor), entertainment, and family activities.MORE

DEEP RIVER – The Rotary Club of Deep River has donated 21 copies of “Listen to the Wind” by Greg Mortenson to Deep River Elementary School so that when children return to school in September, every class will be able to read the same book.MORE

When Chester, Deep River and Essex, Connecticut residents open their book at the beach this summer, chances are good that they’ll be “on the same page” as the person in the next beach chair. Community members of all ages are being given the first-ever opportunity this summer to participate in a community read of “Three Cups of Tea” or its companion books for young readers.MORE

As bullying and school violence get more and more attention, California’s Santa Clara County is taking steps to educate its students in bullying prevention, conflict resolution, and positive values. ABC Parents, a program run by Project Cornerstone, uses children’s books to build Developmental Assets in local students.

See which books the program uses

The idea for the ABC Parents program came from a parent who had participated in the Taking Asset Building Personally study group with Project Cornerstone. Her son had been bullied at school, and she wanted to help students learn about bullying and give them tools to properly address it.

She worked with Project Cornerstone to create a program that used children’s books to start discussions about issues relevant to young students’ lives, including bullying, school climate, and adult role models.MORE

The Children’s Services Council of St. Lucie County, Florida have joined forces with their local Minor League Baseball team, the St. Lucie Mets, to create a summer community reading initiative that is a win for kids.

Young people who participate in the program have the opportunity to earn two free tickets to see the St. Lucie Mets by reading to an adult in their life.

Each participant receives a bookmark with 20 “bases” to complete around the baseball diamond. For each base, they must read 15 minutes out loud to an adult. The adult who listens must initial one space per 15 minutes read. Once the participant has completed all of the bases, they can “slide into home” and bring the completed bookmark to the St.MORE

Move over, Oprah’s Book Club. Community reading programs involving adults, youth, and children have been popping up in communities across the country in recent years. From suburban Minnesota to metropolitan Ohio, communities of all shapes and sizes have made literacy a priority. Here are three very different community reading programs and how they make their cities better places for kids to grow up.

Our Community Reads: Hopkins, Minnesota

The first Our Community Reads program took place during the 2004-2005 school year. The idea was generated by the Hopkins Community Coalition, formerly known as Reduce the Use, as a strategy to educate adults about parenting teens. The book read has taken place every year since then, and has always used a book to engage parents and adults in the community.MORE