By Maryfrances Porter, Associate Director for Program Evaluation and Community Consultation at Youth-Nex

Related posts will be available under Community.

We’ve been busy!

Over the last 4 weeks our hard-working Program Evaluation and Community Consultation team has partnered with neighbors from the City of Promise to conduct almost a hundred surveys with families there (Westhaven, 10th and Page, and Starr Hill neighborhoods).We trained folks living in the City of Promise to help collect the surveys, and the response has been overwhelming (See www.cityofpromise.org for background on the initiative). We also have been working with other City of Promise partners at the Charlottesville City Schools and the Thomas Jefferson Health Department to gather other data so that City of Promise can get the most comprehensive understanding of the community strengths, resources, needs, and priorities related to child health and their educational needs.

On Saturday, June 23,  Youth-Nex facilitated a community meeting where neighbors got a first peek at some of the information that has been collected and provide feedback, as well as to start to design the continuum of solutions that will eventually comprise the City of Promise’s seamless pathway to college and career for every child living in the footprint. (For more on this see City of Promise.) Survey and other data will be presented in a series of community meetings the first week in July – stay tuned!

In other news, on Tuesday 6/26/12, I presented on a panel with colleagues from the Virginia Department of Education, JustChildren and Voice for Virginia’s Children entitled “Is It Normal School Behavior or Criminal? Understanding and Responding to Adolescent Problem Behavior in School” at “Making a Difference in Juvenile Justice,” the 2012 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Conference held by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services in Newport News, Virginia.

There are lots of other projects in the works – more to come over the summer!