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Youth First History
2005
May 2005 - A group of 20 teachers, parents, and community members (heavy on Gridley Unified School District (GUSD) employees) evaluated nine Character Education programs/frameworks. After much dialogue in attempt to understand the underlining issues for our youth and community the team decided the best framework/approach would be a community wide approach using the 40 Developmental Assets, the Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth approach. This information is taken to the Gang Task Force, the GUSD School Board, Superintendent and administrators and the Gridley City Council by Cynthia Soares and Maggie Hepworth doing introduction presentations on the Developmental Assets and where the Task Force would like to take this Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth approach..
June 2005 - Cynthia Soares hired by City of Gridley to consult for the community group. Up to this point there had been a variety of names being thrown around for this group and no one was sure what our name was, and we needed to revisit the goals, mission and vision statements to make sure we are on the right path.
June 22, 2005 - Gridley Task Force, Youth Empowerment Branch has a Community Asset Building Training to introduce the Assets to the community. Everything is translated into Spanish/translation available. 50+ people show up to training (City of Gridley Mayor, GUSD Superintendent, GUSD Administrator, Chief of Police, Gridley City Council members, middle school/high school students, Girl Scouts, Assistant D.A. Butte County, teachers, etc….)
End of June 2005 - Name is officially changed to Gridley/Biggs Community Safety Task Force (goals, mission, vision attached in separate document that were formalized on our October 2005 meeting) to be more inline with the framework of the 40 Developmental Assets and addressing all youth and all of their potential issues and growth.
July 2005 - Second Asset training : Desire to build on our foundation: review 40 Developmental Assets, map our assets (our strengths in Gridley), wanted to create an initiative name/logo but only 20 people in attendance, not enough youth, decided to wait and want to have a Youth Summit to introduce assets and have the youth come up with name/logo.
August, September, October, November 2005 - Many ideas have been identified some action has been taken:
- Family is most important - Family Link Night November 21, 2005
- A number of families were run on the front page of our local newspaper highlighting how important family time is, discipline, things they like to do together. Gridley City Council moved their meeting, some local schools did not have sports practice or assign homework, families to stay home and have an evening together cooking, playing, turning off the T.V. and computer….deemed a success!
- Parents and Youth need to get information about the Assets and activities in our community - to support asset #18: Constructive Use of Time.
- An eight page newspaper was developed, The Strongest Link (4 pages in English/4 pages in Spanish) to share local activities/events geared towards our youth. An easy place for parents to get this information. This was printed in Sept 05 with Oct, Nov, and Dec activities, funded mostly by a community group with a little funding from each city. It was mailed out to all most all residents of both Gridley and Biggs. Nov 22, 05, Gridley City Council funded three more publications to be printed with the high school students from Gridley High doing the layout. Going before Biggs City Council in Dec 05.
- Safety in our Neighborhoods is important
- Some of our rental areas have been identified as pockets with more crime, gang, or other criminal activity or property violations. Tuesday November 29, 05 a meeting is being held to get information from property managers/landlords on what information would be helpful to them on tenant issues and to provide updated legal issues for them with a longer training to be planned with the information that is exchanged.
November 22, 2005 - The City of Gridley approved up to eight hours ($1,200) for a community consultant from Search Institute on guiding us through developing a plan.