Agenda - Council - 05/27/1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I I What Can We Do As A Community.~ · We all know our community will be developed for future days by starting and continuing to teach our children. We must address higher levels of values in order to improve society. · Communication is the main key. If you can't talk to them you are done. · Children need to be listened to. They need to know someone is interested in their well being. Positive reinforcement. · They need to feel a sense of purpose and belonging and need to learn that human life is valuable. · My suggestion is to help young people to learn to respond to and deal with peer pressure. · Remove or reduce the age barrier so kids can obtain jobs to earn their own money and encourage employees to work with and train kids to become good adults. · Identi~ and develop youth to be peer leaders. Hold focus groups with community youth in which peer leaders co-facilitate (in my experience it is more effective to be an active participant in finding solutions to an issue when the issue is presented by someone who's been there). If the youth in our communities are involved in the solution, they will have an investment in seeing the program succeed. Ultimately, a collaborative effort of the community, youth, parents, educators, community leaders, law enforcement officials and interested citizens would enhance the successful development and implementation of, the Youth First program. · More discipline brings better behavior. Enforced consequences for bad behavior. Youth should understand consequences. · Youth must understand right and wrong and how to make good choices and to be able to anticipate the results (good or bad) of the choices they make. They must learn to accept accountability and consequences of their action. Many youth today don't know what a conscience or guilty feelings are. It's not being taught at home or in school and many rarely go to church. What a sad future. · Search Institute information has been beneficial. We also like how city government, churches and other agencies are coordinating efforts. Keep getting the information out! · As a former teacher and now parent I've seen our youth struggling with a lot of hairy issues. Anything we can do to help them, giving them place to be and making them feel needed and cared about is a step in the right direction. · Be proactive rather than reactive. · Communication, communication, communication!!! With ohr kids. Get as much good information to them as possible. · Involve your community organizations, churches, etc. We feel somewhat protected from inner city problems out here, but I feel strongly that we should keep it that way, so stress that gangs, drugs, guns, etc. are definitely something to stay away from. · Use common sense, something that is not very common today. · I believe that all these core values and other misbehaviors should be the responsibility of the home and church. Maybe 20% should be at the school as most often the child thinks it's a joke. · Having people come in and talk to youth about different problems-racial, abortions, teenage pregnancies and AIDS. · Is our area connected with the Search Institute's work? What links do community agencies and churches have with the schools to address these issues together? · There are many activities youth can direct their energy to, we all need each other. Motivation towards those needs have to be identified and executed. · All publications, information, etc. must explain what the terms ~Healthy Communities" and "Youth First" refer to and what the goals are. Children going home to an empty house and alone for hours is trouble. There has to be a way to work this out.