At the June 1st project presentation the community, youth documentary team, and UC Davis project staff had a very productive discussion. Lots of great ideas about moving forward with the project came up, here are some notes with future ideas:
Next Steps with UC Davis:
Creating a unique version of a sister-city with the Blue Mountain Community
Creating a support system to encourage the youth team to attend college
Working with local schools on formatting service learning projects
Forming a greater partnership with the
Modeling the
River Maintaining /Clean up
Go beyond
Set up skill and interest database to find ways to link people with skills and interests (Terra initiates people to do this through the youth center)
How can the Community Support Youth?
Don’t know how to get motivated
Get ideas/info on how to stay motivated in school
Meeting at the youth center among young people who have gone to school (Kevin Willard will start holding the meetings) and folks/youth interested in going to school.
Consider joining Boy/Girl Scouts to learn more about college, careers, etc.
Do more talking with each other
Meet again on Wednesdays to brainstorm ways to continue at youth center
Adults encouraged to comment on the blog
2 comments:
There has been something going around in my head for a while now. This has to do with community, young people and how to encourage involvement. Going by my own experience it takes a lot to understand community and our place in it. I have a feeling that most young people in our culture have a very undeveloped sense of community. As in, "Some day, after I get out of school and maybe have a family of my own, then I might find a way to be part of a community". When, in fact, all of us are part of a community in one form or another, either active or not. There seems to be a great deal of indifference, or the "I don't want to get involved" attitude out there for young and old alike. I think this fundamental breakdown is our most serious challenge. Identifying what community is, our place in it, and what we can do to bring about those positive changes that make where we live better for everyone. All of us have heard ‘in order to get good at something it takes practice', well building community is no different and the sooner we all start practicing together, or at least not getting in each others way the more progress we can make.
Another thing I've been trying to articulate to myself and others is the idea of leadership as it relates to our education and how we decide to support ourselves. It seems to me that school does little to help us integrate into community and be self supportive. We go to school to make ourselves employable. And there is a certain amount of necessity to this but what I think is more important is the need to instil in young people that they have the capacity to find their own nitch. Teach how to find that nitch before teaching how to work for someone else. No, not everyone can have their own successful small business, but not everyone can have success working for "the man" either. And the more of use who are able to support ourselves and maybe one or two others the stronger our community becomes. Being able to take the lead in supporting ourselves, our families and our communities is what I mean by leadership. Not necessarily being the boss but having a goal in mind and figuring out who to work with to help make things happen, that is also leadership.
Alan
Alan
again, i'm thankful for your thoughts and that you are taking the time to jot them down for us to think on too.
i think you make a good point about young folks sometimes not having a very developed sense of what community means to them and, as a result, feel it's something they might find later. but i think this is more a matter of not taking time to reflect on what community means to each of us, what it looks/feels like, and where we either have it or can create it. i think young folks are engaged in lots of different communities and if we all sat together and talked about it we/they would enjoy identifying where they had a sense of community (or didn't), the characteristics of community, and how to develop those characteristics in other parts of our/their lives.
in other words, i think it gets down to taking time to reflect and plan--something a whole lot of us were never encouraged to do, don't have a lot of time to do, just plain haven't had the opportunity to do, or don't do out of a sense that the future is a tad hopeless.
i find stopping to muse on experiences kind of addictive. it helps me better understand who i am, what things means to me, and how to best move myself forward. i think young folks might have a similiar experience. perhaps something we could do at an upcoming gathering of youth/adults in the Blue Mtn area is some fun discussions of when we've experienced a sense of community and then piggyback from there onto a talk about how we can better develop the kinds of characteristics of community that we'd want.
just a thought!
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