4:30 Welcome, introductions, ground rules, agenda

5:00 Celebrate Successes: activity, report, survey results, discussion

5:45 Break and dining

6:15 Where do we go from here? Survey results, consensus building

6:45 Planning begins

7:15 Wrap up

1. What do you see going well for young people through your work personally, the work of your organization, and/or through Greater MDI Communities for Children?

• Youth have voice in community leadership
• Increase in island-wide collaborations to support youth
• Many ways for youth to connect – diverse activities, safe spaces to gather
• Assessment of needs
• Demonstration of care and concern
• Bridging gaps between youth and community, particularly through service and service learning
• Community awareness of C4C

2. After reviewing the purpose statement for Greater MDI Communities for Children below, what is your vision of what C4C should do in the next year to build on its success?

• Focus on early childhood development – supporting parents (of children of all ages) and childcare providers
• Involve youth
• Stronger, systematic voice in community decision making
• Through projects, service opportunities, provide follow up to youth summit

• Review youth survey results and implement programs and strategies to meet needs, including transportation, safe places to gather, weekly activities, employment workshops and community school
• Educate community about C4C
• Continue to build collaborative efforts
• Attend to sustainability of C4C

• Youth task force in substance use prevention will engage more youth in the community and in leadership roles
• Reach at risk families as one way to focus on early childhood development
• Assess offerings and address gaps in regards to what is "out there" for children of all ages
• What resources for early identification of risk are there?
• Identified the need for "community parenting"
• How to prevent risk behaviors?
• Get C4C "out there" as resource for parents
• Create safe places for parents to get ideas and help for childhood development issues

Early childhood prevention

• Support for childcare providers, assess their needs, come talk with C4C in a round table , identify barriers
• Summit of childcare providers
• Monthly meetings exist, take next step with C4C help
• Reaching home providers

• A weekly newspaper column about parenting
• Monthly gathering for parents, coffee hour with childcare
• Talk with providers and parents to identify gaps and needs, barriers and opportunities
• Document child development long term, use as study and basis for other programs or communities. Track families
• Community school/invite community into help raise children which, in turn, can provide funding for the communities
• Synopsis of growing up on MDI (from each town) and how this compares to perceived gaps via longitudinal study, radio show, school project, or community service
• Identify significant experiences that kept students on track and away from unsafe risk taking
• Track children
• Central place for parenting resources to libraries or other center
• Offer programs/packages on parenting
• Spaghetti dinner with topics
• Form sub committees to pursue these ideas
• Identify problems – clarify before "solving"

• Convene group with Vanessa to plan next steps
• Connect with other agencies, organizations doing similar work

Youth involvement

• Youth on C4C leadership council
• Part of community service requirement as one way to get youth participation on council
• Bring this conversation to youth summit young people
• Youth on boards of organizations working with youth
• Young people in community governance
• Skateboard park
• Have youth driven projects, they take responsibility for projects and working with them
• Respect and responsibility taught as classes
• "What do you think?" and "What are you going to do?" to get input from youth
• Talk and give tools to accomplish goals to the youth to educate them about the processes involved with making community changes
• Be in schools during lunch meeting time to get teen involvement rather than after school meetings
• Council will look into the possibility of getting youth on recreation boards

• Meet with Genell to discuss these ideas
• Peg and Genell will meet the youth forum planning team on Monday, August 11 and discuss these ideas to get youth input
  

Next meeting will be on September 11, from 3:30-5 pm at the MDI High School Superintendents conference room. Plan to discuss these issues further.