The Brooklyn Park Youth Opportunities Coalition is an effort to bring together all the segments of the community that serve, or have a stake in, our youth. Meeting once a month, these adults help guide the efforts of Champions for Youth.
Purpose
The Youth Opportunities Coalition brings together the assets for youth that already exist in Brooklyn Park while collaborating to provide new opportunities. The Coalition works to mobilize Brooklyn Park’s community organizations whose missions are to provide youth programs and services in Brooklyn Park. This effort leads to more efficient planning and implementation of a variety of quality programs. It also helps the city and other agencies communicate more effectively with youth, involve teens in the planning process, and improve access to services for all youth.
Meetings
History
The Brooklyn Park Citizen Long-range Improvement Committee began studying the topic of youth opportunities in Fall 2005 after a citizen survey (commissioned by the City Council) showed residents were concerned about juvenile crime and a lack of opportunities for youth in the city. After a few months, a sub-committee formed to further explore the topic. They talked with local experts in the field of youth programming, held a round table discussion with Brooklyn Park youth, visited existing youth programs in the city, and explored what other cities have done for youth programming. Through its research, the sub-committee then decided that the topic of youth opportunities is too broad for the city, or any other organization or agency, to address on its own. For this reason, they suggested a coalition to bring all these different groups together to collaborate and communicate so the issues of Brooklyn Park youth can be addressed more effectively and efficiently. On June 25, 2007, the Brooklyn Park City Council approved the formation of the Youth Opportunities Coalition and the hiring of a part-time coordinator through funding from a civic engagement grant from the McKnight Foundation.