Highlighting America’s 100 Best Communities for Young People
The 100 Best Communities for Young People competition honors outstanding efforts on behalf of young people by multiple sectors of communities. In cities, suburbs, small towns and counties across the country, this annual competition is leading communities to assess their efforts, work more effectively together for young people, and share best practices. Each week one of the 2007 100 Best Communities will be highlighted in the America’s Promise Bulletin and on our web site.
Yavapai County, Arizona
By Christopher Epps
Densely forested mountains with clear blue lakes, red rock canyons, limestone ledges, and desert lowlands sprouting clusters of Prickly Pear cactus all characterize this beautiful community. Located in the center of the state, Yavapai County focuses on continuous improvement, appreciating that with every year progress is expected.
Much progress has been made since this community earned recognition as a 100 Best community in 2005. Recently Yavapai County has formed an after-school alliance, a comprehensive nonprofit consortium and a collaboration with the intent on raising money to address area youth drug and alcohol issues. A section of the Governor’s Plan for Our Youth aspires to build local public/private partnerships and target new resources resulting in, among other advancements, an Early Education Fund with private dollars.
To detect possible issues that may result in early learning problems, $150 million is spent annually through the First Things First initiative to fund voluntary early health, dental and vision screenings.
Youth involvement is important to residents of Yavapai County, but learning from and interacting with citizens of all ages is important as well. Recognizing that all citizens may have an area of expertise to offer for the greater good is useful on many task forces or committees. In fact, young people in the county have been offered a seat at the governing table via a series of newly formed youth commissions that solicit their opinions and advice.
Other initiatives that focus on youth and helped this community become one of 100 Best Communities for Young People include:
MAT FORCE:
Created to combat youth use of Methamphetamines, this group comprises law enforcement, neighborhood groups, faith-based organizations, youth and governmental agencies. More than $270,000 in grant funds have be raised to organize community forums, conduct research and fund education and awareness campaigns.
Social Responsibility Training (SRT):
SRT is an intervention/prevention training program for dropout prevention and recovery. The program promotes healthy lifestyles and devises master plans with short and long term goals for its participants. SRT has been adopted by several school districts with additional grant funding to expand into other communities.
Youth Count:
A nonprofit agency mandated to create non-traditional solutions to unique challenges facing youth, this agency acts as the fiscal agent to facilitate collaborative grants that can be used for initiatives and programs throughout the community. To date, Youth Count has brought in over $800,000 in grants which have been made available to youth-serving organizations.