The town of Worthington is located in an agriculture-based, rural area of southwestern Minnesota. Worthington is home to a Swift & Company meatpacking plant, owned by the third largest beef and pork processor in the world. As the largest employer in the area, the plant has drawn many new families to Worthington.
The Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Coalition was started in the mid-1990s it was as a response to the influx of new families into the town. Today the majority of new townspeople are Hispanic families that have moved to Worthington from all over the country seeking to join family members in the area and find employment. In an area known for the homogeneity of its white Scandinavian farm families and small town folk, Worthington boasts an elementary school and a middle school whose populations are made up of over 50% Hispanic students. Running primarily on a grant from the University of Minnesota’s Konopka Institute, the HC•HY Coalition in this small town has provided youth leadership and after–school activities that engage many young people in the community.
One of the primary activities of the coalition is the Youth Engagement Council (YEC), which is geared toward students in grades 9-12. The goal of the YEC is to have “youth and adults working in partnership to inform and improve local youth serving systems.” Youth are able to build leadership and communication skills and develop interviewing techniques through their involvement with YEC. Last year the council conducted interviews with community youth about available youth resources to determine what was currently available and what they would like to see in the future. They found that young people wanted to be involved in after–school activities but did not know what was going on in the community. As a result, the Council decided to put together a Youth Activities Map showing all the activities available to youth in the area. Read the YEC maps in English and Spanish.
The HC•HY Coalition also runs after–school assistance programs for elementary and middle school students. In a town whose school-age population is about 2600, the middle school homework assistance program assists 90 students every day and the elementary program averages 200 students daily!
One of the strategies that the Worthington group has used to ensure their staying power as an initiative is to work collaboratively with other groups in the community. “We are very partner driven,” says long time initiative coordinator Rhonda Brandt. “We wanted to make sure that, when the [Konopka] grant ran out, the program would be able to continue, even if it didn’t look the same.” So the coalition has made sure that it is involved with other organizations in the town of Worthington. The largest of these partners is the community education program; it is largely due to this partnership that the coalition has been able to do so well over the years. Among other things, the community education program has funded HC•HY and underwritten most of the daily operating costs. Brandt goes on to say, “We’ve gone through ups and downs in funding. But because of the community education program we’ve had stability. We haven’t had to fund a coordinator because that position is part of the community education program. So even though the HC•HY Coalition board helps us look for funding opportunities in the community, they really play more of a support role.” As with so many other successful community initiatives, Worthington has found its strength in partnerships with other like-minded organizations.
Information for this article was taken, in part, from a presentation given by Rhonda Brandt at the Safe and Healthy Learners Conference on January 15, 2008.
Rhonda Brandt can be reached by phone at (507) 372-1205 and by email at rhonda.brandt@isd518.net
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