Council for Youth Development

Council for Youth Development and Community Partnerships

Who we are

    Vision
    Core Assumptions
    History
    Organizational Chart

What we are doing

    Developmental Grid
    Taking Aim Report
    Key Indicators

Where to get more info

Documents
Web Sites

How to get involved

Contact Jacque Douglas
812 314-3858

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History

In 1993 staff from three Columbus-based foundations convened a group of business and government leaders to sponsor an effort called the Children, Youth, and Families Initiative (CYFI). CYFI was established to address the needs of at-risk and disadvantaged youth whose numbers and severity of problems appeared to be escalating. The mission of CYFI became one of enhancing the positive development of all children and youth in Bartholomew County. To realize its vision, CYFI chose to work on four specific projects - enhancement of Healthy Families, after-school enrichment, a neighborhood center start-up, and a summer jobs program for teenagers. Five years later, as documented in a 1998 evaluation, these projects were considered successes by those most directly affected by them. But the evaluators from IUPUI were critical that the CYFI’s theory of change had been poorly articulated, as were the outcomes and the indicators that could measure their impact on the community.

In 1999 building on the lessons learned from CYFI, United Way of Bartholomew County, in partnership with several other organizations, developed the second generation of CYFI and called it Priority One: Put Kids First. The mission of this initiative was also to enhance the positive development of all children and youth in the county - to make Bartholomew County the best place to be a kid and raise a kid. Attention was paid to grassroots input through 100 Meetings in 100 Days. Two key projects surfaced - a youth-directed Teen Council and access to affordable quality child care. The child care project gained considerable momentum for the scholarship program, but two years later cuts in state funding necessitated the elimination of the scholarship program and training support. Priority One advocates continued to struggle to convince the tax-paying community and policy makers that child care and youth development were worthy investments.

The Summit on Children and Youth, the third generation of this work, emerged in 2003 from community concerns that many children and youth were at a serious disadvantage because of a lack of positive development experiences in school, in the community or within their families. Given the past ten years of lessons learned participants of the Summit on Children and Youth chose to pursue a researched and more structured approach to community planning. In August 2004 the Summit received planning grant from the Indiana Association of United Way to move the initiative forward. The Summit became the Council for Youth Development and Community Partnerships, which has been using this six-month grant period to work on strategic planning.