Clearwater, Florida

February 24, 2005

Martin Luther King, Jr. Family Center

Improving Outreach Meetings	What is Working	Youth Related Issues	Obstacles/Issues
Concern about lack of community information about meeting	Girl Scouts	Misconceptions about teens as “bad” caused by drama created by media	Programs are hostage to funding which can inhibit creativity
Need to hear the voice of those impacted by DJJ issues	Precious Pearls (80 girls involved with mentors)	Create a new “Spin” that emphasizes the positive	Competition among providers for money decreases cooperation
Need more outreach into those neighborhoods most impacted(33755, 33705, 33712)	Boy Scouts	Respect kids as people, they may be doing “bad” things, but they still have values, respect for others	Questions about how we (as council members/providers) bridge our own gaps to increase trust and cooperation
Out-of-the Box Outreach: Churches, Barber & Beauty Shops	Services help(mental health, community oriented)	Appearances are not the person	Need to go to the churches and contact “lay” leaders (via ministers) to create more support
Current format is intimidating; use circle format; empower participants to counter hopeless, overwhelmed feelings.	“Safe House” for drug treatment worked in the community until it lost funding	Need to talk about youth in these meetings	Hidden agendas of participants leads to diminished interest
Explore other ways of having meeting: Family days;	Weed-N-Seed projects – brought computers to neighborhood cent	Hard for youth to get out of bad neighborhood/situation without help
Get organization’s representatives available to talk about services	Glad Council has come here; we need to be working together.	Need more things for kids to do that are low cost or free
Later meeting times		Need for real jobs for youth that pay something, mean something and are year round.
		Concern about criminalization of youth- Legal issue of criminal records following youth – need for pro-bono lawyering for youth

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