Three-time 100 Best Winners
The 2008 100 Best Communities for Young People includes cities and small towns located across the United States that are wonderful places for youth to live and grow up. Included on this impressive list are 43 communities that have been recognized as 100 Best Communities three times in a row.
These 43 communities are featured below, in alphabetical order by state.
ALABAMA
Sylacauga, Alabama: Sylacauga, known as "The Marble City" for having the largest solid deposit of marble in the world, is a 100 Best winner for the third time—and rightfully so. Partnerships, not marble, are the foundation upon which the city has built its infrastructure to support the healthy growth and development of its youth and their families. Practically every sector of the community has been involved in using strategic data analysis to define the gaps in services and opportunities, developing successful strategies and activities to address those gaps.
ALASKA
Anchorage, Alaska: The Municipality of Anchorage is the largest city in the state of Alaska, with 278,700 residents, comprising more than two-fifths of the state's total population. The city is named a 100 Best for the second year, in part, because of the efforts put forth by Anchorage’s Promise which upholds the Five Promises philosophy, and for Anchorage Youth Development Coalition (AYDC), which has over 300 individual members committed to the vision that “all Anchorage youth are valued, involved, and thriving members of our community.”
ARIZONA
Chandler, Arizona: Chandler created The Coalition for Chandler Youth in September 2006 to addresse youth issues on a community-wide basis. The Coalition has been instrumental in disseminating the Five Promises. Comprised of youth representatives, city governments, private businesses and a variety of other organizations, the “Day of Play” casts over 20 groups, requiring that every aspect of the event fall accurately under one of the Five Promises.
Scottsdale, Arizona: Scottsdale, recognized as a premier and posh tourist destination, is again, more importantly, recognized as a 100 Best for the second year in a row. This is due to Scottsdale’s commitment to promoting the Five Promises to help each child have the fundamental resources that he or she needs to be ready for the future. Collaboration is the cornerstone of the Scottsdale community. Their network includes the City of Scottsdale Human Services, Parks and Recreation, Libraries, Police Department, the Scottsdale Unified School District, Scottsdale Healthcare, Scottsdale LINKS, the Interfaith Network of Scottsdale and The Arizona Republic newspaper.
Tempe, Arizona: Tempe, Arizona, a long time host of the Fiesta Bowl, has a long history of pioneering youth policies, programs, services, and partnerships. The Tempe Mayor’s Youth Advisory Commission is believed to be the oldest such commission in the country. Each of the city’s three multigenerational facilities was designed for nonprofits to provide childcare, youth recreation, and other youth programs.
ARKANSAS
Little Rock, Arkansas: Little Rock is having some fun in the summer time with its Summer Youth Employment and Internship Program which emphasizes employment skills, training and work ethics. Approximately 400 young people, ages 16-21, were hired for the program last summer and 10 of these young people successfully organized and administrated the program. These young mentors presented their success to the Little Rock Board of Directors, advocating for greater financial and policy support for youth programs throughout the city.
CALIFORNIA
Solano County, California: Solano County, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay area, is a community that works together by valuing its children and enhancing the lives of all its residents. First5 Solano Children and Families Commission is dedicated to promoting, supporting, and improving early childhood development by creating, fostering and partnering with community resources and programs that support healthy and safe children, families, and community. They embrace the creative, emotional, social, cognitive, and physical development as key ingredients to healthy children becoming successful adults.
CONNECTICUT
Milford, Connecticut: Milford, a suburb with a substantial art culture, was selected as a 100 Best for the third year, in part because its emphasis on teaching programs like “ProjectGraduation.” This new and innovative program targets at-risk high school students and assigns them to a local business mentor. This relationship provides a Caring Adult as well as an opportunity to shadow a specific job. The intention of the program is to help establish a potential career path as well as increase the self-esteem, accountability and attitude of the “at-risk” students.
FLORIDA
Coral Springs, Florida: The Youth Services Committee, formed in 2004 to promote and increase opportunities for young people, is one of the shining stars of Coral Springs, Florida. Lead by the city’s Youth Services Coordinator, the committee pulls together community stakeholders from public/private organizations, and local businesses, the Chamber of Commerce and local government, to promote positive recreational outlets, empowering their youth to pursue city leadership opportunities, develop solutions to youth problems and facilitate communication between member organizations
Manatee County, Florida: Named for the adorable “sea cow” that inhabits its waters, Manatee County views one natural resource—its young people—as individuals of leadership, change and inspiration. To foster a bond between the new generation and the more seasoned, the Adopt-A-Grandparent program was born. The program allows youth to work with senior citizens by assisting them with their yard work, grocery shopping, cleaning, and a host of other activities.
St. Petersburg, Florida: The Healthy Start Coalition, established in 1992, is an organization of agencies and committed citizens working collaboratively providing care for pregnant women, their infants and families in St. Petersburg. Specialty programs include Father Services Program and Injury and Violence Prevention. Early Learning Coalition an administrative and planning entity which disseminates funds contractually to community partners to provide high quality professional development services.
IDAHO
Nampa, Idaho: Nampa, a growing suburban city about 20 miles west of the Boise metropolitan area, is named a 100 Best for upholding the Five Promises philosophy. Evidence that children and youth are a policy priority can be found throughout the city, especially where they have been exceedingly successful in pulling together numerous community sectors in order to support young people in their community.
IOWA
Lamoni, Iowa: Although small in size, this third-time 100 Best winner earned recognition because of the many big things it does for its young people. Lamoni’s ability to offer the same opportunities to young people and their families regardless of their educational levels and socio-economic status keep residents here. The community offers parenting classes, leadership opportunities for all, service learning, and collaborations with multiple organizations and agencies.
KENTUCKY
Lexington, Kentucky: Renowned for its distinctive bluegrass pastureland and beautiful rolling horse farms, Lexington offers a host of programs and collaborations established to assure that its youth have an adult support system, are physically and mentally healthy, and have positive experiences during non-school-hour programming. We Can, a new education outreach program, helps youth aged 8-13 remain at a healthy weight through improved food choices and increased physical activity.
Louisville Metro, Kentucky: This home of the Kentucky Derby is also a residence to individuals and groups that strive to affect young lives through its programs, funding and human capital. Initiated by Greater Louisville Inc., Every1Reads, a cross sector program, has helped reduce the number of students reading below grade level by mobilizing community volunteers to assist struggling readers in schools and after-school programs.
Mount Sterling/Montgomery County, Kentucky: Mount Sterling is a city that lies within Montgomery County, Kentucky and, combined, they have been selected in part, because of their work to ensure students have the best problem-solving skills to manage their future. The Reality Store program provides mock life experiences for eighth graders, where they are issued jobs, salaries, and checkbooks, and must face costs and problems associated with daily living.
Murray-Calloway County, Kentucky: Murray-Calloway County is named one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People for the third time in part because of its emphasis on strengthening families and improving outcomes for children and youth by identifying needs, opportunities and priorities for future action; promoting effective city/school collaboration; encouraging and supporting youth voice, engagement, and leadership; and measuring progress over time.
MARYLAND
Wicomico County/City of Salisbury, Maryland: Salisbury is the largest city on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the county seat of Wicomico County. Salisbury is known for being an official port, as well as housing two major national corporations; Perdue Farms and Piedmont Airlines. The community keeps youth as the focus of programs, agencies, and community members, seeking “innovative solutions for community challenges” through collaborative partnerships with local government, public agencies, private non-profits, businesses, faith groups, families, and youth.
MASSACHUSETTS
Barnstable County, Massachusetts: Barnstable County exemplifies the Five Promises. The Barnstable County Council for Children, Youth, and Families is a unified network that promotes the health and well being of children, youth, and families on Cape Cod and the Islands. The Sea-Babies program, a collaboration between Cape Cod Children's Place and Seaman's Bank has a commitment subsidizing childcare for bank employees and offers inexpensive child-care.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: After a three-year multimillion dollar grant from the National Science Foundation, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts created the Terrascope Youth Radio Program, where 30 teens produce weekly public radio shows on environmental science. All participants are paid during the program, and they will learn both the technology behind producing radio programs and the science to support the stories they produce.
MICHIGAN
Marquette & Alger Counties, Michigan: Marquette and Alger Counties uphold the Five Promises philosophy with their programs and collaborations are improving the lives of youth. The Great Parents/Great Start is as a resource for families with children from infants to age five. It recognizes that education begins at birth and works to supports parents in their role as a child's first teacher. Great Start offers programs and resources that encourage positive parent-child interaction in daily activities, provides information on intellectual, social and physical growth in young children, promotes school readiness and teaches parental skills that can help children grow and thrive.
MINNESOTA
Mankato/North Mankato, Minnesota: Residents here embrace young people and work hard to help them reach their fullest potential. Keeping youth needs in focus, the Intergovernmental Youth Asset Committee reviews local government services and integrates youth assets into service delivery whenever possible while the Link Crew program, a year-long support system, helps students successfully transition into high school by training selected juniors and seniors to serve as mentors for incoming freshmen.
St. Louis Park, Minnesota: The Friends of the Arts works with local youth, providing them with artistic experiences, to help foster their creativity in this suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Lake Forest Neighborhood's Arts Crawl raised scholarship funds for young people, and sponsored family art programs. The Lutheran Church works with all local young artists giving them a place to perform and present art projects. The city of St. Louis Park also invites youth to participate in decision making on special neighborhood and community issues.
MISSOURI
Springfield-Green County, Missouri: According to Forbes Magazine’s list of "America's Wildest Weather Cities," Springfield has the most varied weather in the nation. They also have an exceptional number of collaborations that benefit youth and uphold the Five Promises. Membership of these groups represents all sectors, including faith, business, elected officials, education, juvenile, civic, health and mental health.
MONTANA
Missoula, Montana: Missoula County is one of the 100 Best for the second year, in part, because of its “Flagship” program, which brings community resources and activities on site to the schools to provide safe and healthy activities for youth during non-school hours. Supported by local government, area businesses and the schools, more than 2,100 students regularly participate in its activities. Last year, approximately 35 community groups and 987 volunteers provided more than 11,000 hours of programming. Individual schools continue one-on-one partnerships with organizations.
NEBRASKA
Boys Town, Nebraska: Girls & Boys Town is the only community in the nation where every adult’s job is to provide safety, love, education and treatment to boys and girls with high needs. With a foundation of strong values, character, faith and citizenship, this community’s programs have generated positive changes in the lives of abused, neglected and abandoned young people since 1917. With 80 percent of students participating in sports, “Competing With Character” offers specific methods that train adults in behavioral expectations, teach character to youth and integrate these elements into youth athletic programs.
NORTH CAROLINA
Charlotte-Meckenburg, North Carolina: Charlotte-Mecklenburg established the Children's Alliance (CA) in 2003. Today the Alliance is comprised of 40 executive directors serving agencies that work as a united voice for children. The Children’s Alliance is focused on coordinating services, identifying service gaps, enhancing public awareness for youth issues and ensuring funding for children and family services.
NORTH DAKOTA
Grand Forks, North Dakota: Located on the Red River, this “Grand City” is full of empowered residents who recognize youth problems, visualize opportunities, develop solutions, and make them realities. Not only is this community home to several organizations and entities that work to ensure all young people who are eligible for health care coverage are adequately enrolled, but it also has a Mayor’s Cabinet that allows the youth voice to be heard.
OHIO
Findlay-Hancock County, Ohio: With its households containing nearly 30 percent of young people age 18 and younger, Findlay-Hancock County recognizes the importance and value of education and healthful living for its young people. Of the many amazing stories emerging from a tragic summer 2007 flood, one ensuing theme is that of a strong, tight-knit community that continued to work for its youth through the storm. With a Family Center that opened two years ago, the community provides 17 agencies that administer health and social services to youth and their families.
OKLAHOMA
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Oklahoma City, a community that was hit with the largest terrorist act on American soil prior to 9/11—the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995- is once again named as a 100 Best Community for the second year in a row—and rightfully so. The community has overcome a pattern of decline and neglect, and boasts an impressive 96.8% graduation rate for high school seniors.
OREGON
Benton County, Oregon: Benton County is cooking up some really fun programs. The Healthy Start service is unique in its collaborative approach to provide home visits to high-risk parents; reducing child abuse and neglect, and increasing immunizations and well-baby doctor’s visits. Healthy Start services have resulted in 99% of children abuse-free in 2005 and 84% of the children brought up to date on immunizations.
PENNSYLVANIA
Abington, Pennsylvania: Abington was ranked among the 100 Best Communities primarily its Abington Community Taskforce Program (ACT), which recognizes the issues impacting the community’s youth and acknowledges the efforts being made to address them. ACT has collaborated with more than 44 organizations to deal with the issues affecting the community’s young people.
RHODE ISLAND
Providence, Rhode Island: Providence, one of the original 13 Colonies, and dubbed as “The Renaissance City,” is being recognized as one of the 100 Best for the third time. its young people safe after school is not only a challenge but a responsibility. The city’s collective goal is to help the youth become productive, independent citizens. Providence recognizes that quality after-school programming supports academic performance and the likelihood of staying in school and graduating, reducing the occurrence of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and crime.
TEXAS
Houston-Harris County, Texas: Although there are more than one million children within this community situated on the Gulf Coast, a tremendous sense of family exists here. Because childhood obesity is a major issue in this community, health institutions, schools, and community-based-organizations have stepped forward to encourage and sponsor youth activities including marathons and nutrition courses/events. Outside of marathons, Kids Day gives students opportunities after school to work with professionals in the math, science and technology fields.
Sugar Land, Texas: The City of Sugarland was recognized in part because of The Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council, created in 2005, which developed an Internet Safety Awareness Initiative that’s quickly been replicated across the nation. MYAC formed a plan during 2006 addressing youth Internet safety – specifically, personal information posted on the Internet and chat room participation. For children left unprotected, these types of web sites are the most dangerous and yet, popular places on the Internet for youngsters.
VIRGINIA
Chesterfield County, Virginia: Chesterfield County shares a belief that society must work together providing young people the necessities in life to succeed. SAFE, founded in 1999, is a broad organization focused on preventing substance abuse. In 2007, the county participated in a needs assessment for suspended and expelled youths that resulted in keeping young people in school and developing fundamental educational components that may impact success.
Hampton, Virgina: For beautiful sunny beaches and great seafood dining, visit Hampton, Virginia, but as a 100 Best Community, Hampton’s also sailing strong with some amazing youth programs. Three great partnerships support the healthy development of young people throughout the first two decades of life. The Healthy Families Partnership joins city leadership and community agencies with public and private organizations (hospitals, restaurants, businesses) to help all families become healthy and live self sufficient.
Newport News, Virginia: Since 1999, The Community Builders Network (CBN) of Newport News has created powerful linkages between city agencies, community and faith-based organizations, grass-roots coalitions and local youth to increase local community service activities. Their purpose is to enhance the work of coalitions through professional development, prevention training and technical assistance and support.
WASHINGTON
Bellevue, Washington: Bellevue offers some exciting opportunities for children and teens. Bellevue's 9th annual 24-Hour-Relay-Challenge is the largest in the event's history, and includes 1,500 teens/adults, 133 community sponsors/organizations and representatives from every sector of the community (youth leaders, business community, non-profits, school district, government representatives, media, youth organizations, and faith community), all working together to strengthen adult-teen relationships
Lakewood, Washington: This three-time 100 Best winner located just outside of Seattle has a high transient population due to the military. Young people in this community attend schools that are committed to student success and have high expectations of not only the students but their parents, and school faculty and staff. Caring for Kids (CfK), a program that collects shoes, food, coats and school supplies to distribute to qualifying students’ families also coordinates a back-to-school fair which includes check-ups and immunizations.
Spokane County, Washington: Spokane, the easternmost city in Washington State, was chosen as one of the 100 Best due to their fulfillment in upholding the Five Promises. In an unprecedented collaboration of social service agencies, business leaders, media and other community partners, a campaign was launched, "Our Kids: Our Business," to educate the community regarding the threat of abuse to our children and the impact that it has not only on their lives but on the community’s well being. The campaign ran throughout April, the community’s Child Abuse Prevention Month, where a Call to Action framed around the Five Promises was released to the community.
WEST VIRGINIA
Mercer County, West Virginia: Mercer County is one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People for the third time in four years. One program in particular, Creating Opportunities For Youth (COFY) coalition, has reached out through various programs to sway youth away from the pressures of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.
WISCONSIN
Appleton-Fox Cities, Wisconsin: Appleton-Fox Cities is excited about its county-sponsored partnership of communities and schools working to prevent substance abuse. The Outagamie County Pre-Action Network includes community partners from municipal prevention boards, youth serving agencies, local healthcare providers, and other local coalitions and organizations. “Pre-Action” is instrumental in helping nine participating school districts maintain and strengthen school-based prevention efforts.