Make Sure You VOTE!!!
There are many important issues facing youth and youth-serving
agencies…get the facts and vote!
Section 8 Housing, TLP funds, training funds – they all depend on you.
Make sure the youth in your program
vote!
Take your neighbors!
Make your voice and your vote count!
The Growing Pains Conference was a
huge success!!! Thanks to our partner,
daniel, especially Stephanie Waugerman and Trevor Quinlan, for all of their
hard work!
Speaking of the conference, staff are currently
reviewing the evaluations in order to improve on next year’s event – if you
have input, just let me know!
Happy
Birthday, NILA – Now what’s next?
That may sound a little
rough, but as NILA celebrates its 15th birthday, it’s time to keep
the momentum going! We had very
successful Board and member meetings at Growing Pains and have lots of exciting
plans for this year. Look for an
upcoming e-mail regarding changes in By-Laws, new Board members, and Strategic
Plan updates. A major focus will be to
improve the website in order to offer more resources and success stories from
and for our members. Let me know if you
have suggestions!
By CHARLIE PATTON
Florida Times-Union columnist
Joan Martin
remembers the first time she heard Tyler Bacon speak about what it's like to
grow up in the foster care system.
"He got up and lambasted the situation," she said. "He
was one angry kid."
But the
19-year-old Bacon, who entered the foster care system when he was 13, has
learned to control his anger and channel his passion.
He has become
"one of our leaders," said Martin, a program associate for the
Community Partnership for the Protection of Children.
|
Tyler
Bacon is remembered as an angry teen in foster care. Now he works to improve
foster children's lot.
|
Bacon, who has been living on his own in
Jacksonville since shortly after his 18th birthday in May 2003, graduated from
Jackson High School this spring and is planning to enroll
in classes at Florida Community College's Downtown Campus in the fall.
Meanwhile, he has gone to work as youth
advocate for the Community Partnership and is president of Voices, a youth
advisory council for the partnership's
EduCare Program, working under the supervision of Martin.
He also is vice president of the Foster Kids
State Youth Advisory Board and recently graduated as part of Volunteer
Jacksonville's Points of Light
Youth Leadership Institute's class of 2004.
The EduCare Program, funded by the Jim Casey
Youth Opportunities Initiative, is designed to help Jacksonville residents in
the foster care system make a
successful transition out of the system.
As Bacon notes, that transition isn't easy.
When they leave the foster care system at 18, most kids are still in high
school. If they have jobs at all,
they are usually minimum wage without benefits.
Studies have found that in their first four
years out of foster care, 46 percent of former foster youths haven't completed
high school; fewer than half are
employed; and 25 percent are homeless.
The state provides former foster kids like
Bacon with $892 a month for room and board as long as they are enrolled as
students. But unlike the average
18-year-old, a former foster child has no real support system, said Bacon, who
earns $200 a week for his work as a
youth advocate.
"We've got no family to support us
after we are 18," he said. The
EduCare Program tries to fill that gap.
"The idea is to prepare them for adulthood," Martin said.
As a youth
advocate and president of the Voices board, Bacon has become the spokesman and
symbolic leader for the approximately 500 kids, ages 13 to 18, currently in
foster care as well as the recent alumni like him.
How did the
former angry young man reach such a status?
"If you see issues, you have to do
something about them," he said. "I always stood up for myself and
others. I guess they were impressed by my heart."
Many
of you met Tyler at the Growing Pains conference. He is a wonderful example of how good services and a youth with
potential come together to make an extraordinary adult. Please send your success stories to: mailto:salevy@nilausa.org.
NILA
Congratulates this year’s award winners!
Founder’s Award – Kathi Crowe
NILA Award – Daniel Memorial,
Inc.
Youth Award – Tina Williams
Look
for more information about our award winners in an upcoming newsletter!
Two new brochures are available from the
National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth. Go to <http://www.ncfy.com/publications>
to view and download PDF versions of these brochures. To order free copies of these, and all of their publications,
call them at (301) 608-8098 or e-mail a request to mailto:info@ncfy.com:
"Promoting Positive Youth
Development: An Investment in Youth & Communities"
A six-page brochure
that answers the question: How can we better support young people today?
"Reconnecting Youth & Community:
A Youth Development Approach"
A 13-page pocket-size
booklet that highlights how youth development can help rebuild our communities.
Independent
Living Grantees Post Curriculums
The
Children's Bureau funded 12 grantees between 2000 and 2003 to develop
curriculums for training adults who work with youth transitioning out of foster
care to independent living. The National Resource Center for Youth Development
recently posted information about the resulting curriculums of the Independent
Living Training grantees on their website. The postings include brief
descriptions of each program, contact information, and, in many cases, links to
the actual training manuals and other materials.
While all
the curriculums are competency-based training programs that reflect a youth
perspective in making the transition to independent living, some programs also
address such topics as:
To view the training program information for
all of the grantees, visit the National Resource Center for Youth Development
website at www.nrcys.ou.edu/NRCYD/ilgrantees.htm.
Help Save the Section 8
Housing Voucher Program
As you may already know, the Section 8 Voucher program has been frozen on the
federal level for some time now. It is disheartening news that the proposed budget
for the 2005 fiscal year will severely downsize the Section 8 program. These
proposed cuts will devastate our most vulnerable families, including the
hundreds of thousands of families and individuals currently on the Section 8
waitlist in the US.
Working to unfreeze and expand the voucher program is essential to our goal of
eliminating family homelessness. Section 8 helps to ensure that families remain
housed during a time when housing and living costs are increasing while wages
remain stagnant, prolonging the cycle of poverty.
In an effort to renew funding for the Section 8 program, One
Family is undertaking a national petition campaign.
This is a non-partisan effort. Our goal is to gather signatures and present
them to both Presidential candidates. The petition asks these candidates to
make the issue of family homelessness a priority in their administration.
With your help, we believe that we can spark the structural change that is
necessary to bring all of our families home.
Please visit our website, www.onefamilyinc.org
to sign the e-petition or print out the hardcopy of the petition, collect
signatures and then return it to One Family.
We encourage you to pass this email on to your constituents, email lists,
partners and any individuals who you think would like to be involved.
If you would like more information, or to find ways to become even more
involved, please contact Katie Campbell Simons at One Family Inc., 617-423-0504
ext 205 or kcsimons@onefamilyinc.org
$$$ Membership
Dues $$$
If your “dues are due”
and you haven’t paid them (and you know who you are!),
please make sure you send them in. NILA
needs your financial support to survive.
If you are not sure about your membership status, give me a call!
Make your membership
count!
I received the following request from a doctoral student and was hoping
some of you could help. I’ve read her
abstract and the project seems very worthwhile. I’ve asked her to share her results with us:
I am beginning to plan my dissertation study and
need to make contact with persons administering Independent Living Programs for
youth in foster care. Please contact me if you know of persons who I can
contact. I am interested in having youth either aged 15 -18 (my first
preference) or 19+ complete a survey that would 1) assess their knowledge of
life skills needed for the transition to adulthood, 2) assess their
perceptions of barriers to successful transition and 3) assess their
perceptions related to coping-efficacy. Any and all help that you can
provide would be greatly appreciated. I
thank you in advance for your assistance, Glenda Clare mailto:gsclar@wm.edu
What’s Happening?
*Look for upcoming updates on the
website!
*Look for Board membership changes!
*Look for success stories!
*Look for other agencies who could use
NILA services!
