Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
June 22, 2006 issue
Youth Summit Identifies Issues and Opportunities
Story by Kathleen McFadden
Members of several local agencies and organizations met at the Broyhill last Monday for a daylong Summit on Youth sponsored by the Watauga County Extension and Community Association, the Council for Children’s Community of Advocates in Charlotte and the Committee for the 2006 Watauga County Summit on Youth.
In her opening remarks, coordinator Nancy Reigel said, “This is not an event, but the start of a process.”
Organizers envisioned the summit as a way to identify gaps and overlaps in services, facilitate networking among agencies and organizations, identify critical issues and formulate grassroots plans for moving forward to address issues and achieve goals.
The group first shared information gleaned from a Learning Tour consisting of posters with statistical info on local children’s issues. Watauga County has a higher percentage of obese children—20.4 percent—than the statewide average of 17 percent. Per 1,000 children, there are 14.33 acts of crime or violence in Watauga compared to 7.485 statewide, and 17 youth per 1,000 under 18 years of age are involved in the court system in Watauga, compared with 14.6 statewide. In Watauga County, 35.2 percent of children ages zero to five are in regulated childcare, compared with 26.4 percent statewide. In 2002, the average annual cost of childcare in rural North Carolina was $585 more than one year of tuition at ASU.
The Learning Tour statistics indicated that Watauga County has some issues.
Dr. Jolie Bain Pillsbury, president of Sherbrooke Consulting, Inc., delivered the summit keynote address in which she emphasized the critical importance of time in a child’s life. “Think about one year in a baby’s life,” she said. “What happens in a year for a teenager can have an enormous effect on the rest of his life.” Pillsbury added, “What I care about is making things better for children and families in a brief time,” and she told attendees, “Right now, in Watauga County, you can’t see them, but there are children who are lost.” Reaching out immediately is important, she continued. “Do not save the best angels of your soul for disaster.”
Following Pillsbury’s keynote, coordinator and facilitator Ron Redmon led the group in identifying “promising opportunities” for children and ways to realize them. Discussion of the need for were off the table. “Don’t talk about money too soon,” Pillsbury said. “It destroys collaboration. Even under the best circumstances, it takes a long time to get money.”
Participants identified a number of “promising opportunities” that Redmon then categorized under the broad headings: local youth center (building and activities), high school issues (at-risk youth), health and wellness (insufficient school nurses, tobacco/drug/alcohol use, obesity, mental health), family resources, youth voices in the community, young children’s needs and transportation.
Attendees broke up into small groups, each focused on a specific opportunity, and the groups’ task was to identify the issues related to each promising opportunity, determine how to move forward, define group members’ commitments to the effort and estimate a timeline for completion.
A handful of Watauga High students attended the summit and had some news for the older folks. The students aren’t so sure that a youth center—an idea that has wide adult support in the county—is such a great idea. What older folks think is cool, the students said, might not be considered anything close to cool among students. The upshot of the students sharing was the plan to create a youth advisory council to provide input on activities.
The summit coordinators will help facilitate communication among the issue groups formed at the event and will plan a follow-up summit in the coming months to review progress.
Redmon said, “The whole focus of today has been embraced incredibly well. I’m challenging everyone here to use the information and move forward. Use it as a launch pad for citizen-based action to get something done.”
Brett Loftis, executive director of the Council for Children in Charlotte, provided closing remarks. “We can talk about problems all day long,” he said, “but until we make the decision to institutionalize change, change won’t happen for children.” Loftis urged attendees to learn to communicate with each other, to decide what they’re going to do, to connect issue-driven groups and to not work in a vacuum.
“The more you see children in the juvenile justice system or going out the back door in shackles,” Loftis said, the more motivated you are to work on the front end.”
Wrapping up the summit, Redmon said, “Ladies and gentlemen and youth, thank you for being here. We’re done and we’ve just started.”