Union of Youth

On Monday October the 13th, the Primetime Grant Collaborative and its Primetime Fellows were celebrated for their wonderful contribution to the Northfield community. The PRIMEtime Fellows are high school students that assist with elementary and middle school at after school and summer programming. The Fellows were a recent winner for the Red Wagon Award in Minnesota, which is co-sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance with Youth and Lieutenant Governor Carol Molnauand and recognizes young people who have demonstrated the following:

* Increased academic achievement
* Civic engagement & service
* Exemplary leadership

The Northfield Skateboard Coalition was a recipient of the award in 2007.

The School Board Meeting also included a presentation by the Primetime Collaborative Team in which they went over successes and numbers for the 2007-2008 school year and summer programming. PRIMEtime stands for Promoting Responsible Individuals through Mentoring and Enrichment and is a collaborative effort to assure out-of-school-time programming for Northfield youth in grades 4-12 and is funded by the Minnesota Department of Education. Over 1000 youth participated in the Primetime programming during the 2007-2008 grant year and included: PLUS - an after school program that meets four days per week at Bridgewater Elementary School & Greenvale Park Elementary School; the Middle School Youth Center - open daily after school in the Northfield Middle School; The Key; and Summer PLUS - a summer-long academic and recreational program for elementary and middle school students. Community partners include Connected Kids Mentoring, Aztec Dancers, Comadres, Reaching Our Goals (ROG), Woman’s Circle, TORCH, and many others. Northfield Healthy Community Initiative did an excellent job as the hosting agent and helped coordinate and implement many aspects of the grant.

Thanks to Marnie Thompson, Pat Parlin, and Roger Jeni giving the presentation as well as the youth who also spoke at the meeting.

Check out Griff’s Wigley’s post on Locally Grown; it has much better photos than this post.

Anyone interested in the powerpoint presentation (minus the pictures, sorry) can download it here:
primetime-powerpoint-minus-pictures

On Thursday May 22nd Bridgewater Elementary School hosted an end of year celebration for a wonderful year of after school programming. Over 150 people showed up to the celebration which included Aztec Dancing, pinata smashing, clothes pin fishing, face painting, a free dinner, cotton candy, and a lot of prizes. Key Kids helped set up the event and even ran the fishing booth. A big applause goes to Kari Gorr and Lily Thiberot for organizing and running the event. For many many pictures of this event, including about 40 photos of the Aztec Dancers, please click here.
Funding for the Minnesota After-School Community Learning program is provided by the Minnesota Department of Education

The Northfield Union of Youth’s Seatbelt Challenge Team skipped a half an hour of school this Monday in order to help out with seatbelt awareness stenciling. Key Youth Board members at the High School and Artech helped pick stencil locations and helped stencil with the air brush provided by the city. The bright yellow stencils said “BUCKLE-UP” with a design of two hands buckling a seatbelt and were placed at entrances and exits at the High School and Artech. Today’s seatbelt stenciling was part of a county-wide project aimed at reducing (and eliminating) preventable teen fatalities and serious injuries in Rice County. Kathy Cooper, the coordinator for the Rice County Safe Communities Coalition (funded through the State of Minnesota Safe Community Toward Zero Death grant), helped organize today’s activities and deserves an applause for her tireless efforts. To take a look at some pictures of the event, please click here.

The Key is still trying to save the kids at the High School and Artech with their involvement in the Seatbelt Challenge.

The Key’s Drug Action Meeting at the Armory was a wonderful success and generated many new and creative ideas that will be in action very soon. Over 85 people showed up for the event. The meeting was also a success for new collaborations. A big thanks goes to Skip Zimmerman and Amy Belcher from the YMCA, Zach Pruitt and Kathy Sandberg from the Rice County Chemical Health Coalition, and Pat Allen from the Mayor’s Task Force. The biggest thanks goes to the Northfield Union of Youth’s Youth Board for making this event happen and for causing so much to be achieved from the event. They all received a standing ovation at the event and deserved it. Ruth Amerman and Marie Fischer were wonderful as the facilitator and introductory speaker. Gus DeMann did a mean stopwatch, putting the smackdown on those who went too long. Mackenzie O’Connell and Jena Fredrick were great as the runners (which was a difficult job). Max Jennings, Gerritt Duys, Sam Dunnewold, Ani Lovoll, Kellen Kirchberg, Phoebe Currier, Andi Sison, Tom Launer, Abe Henson, Zane Anway, and others helped with the setup and cleanup. All of them participated in the group discussions helping to give the event some youth focus. Eventually we will get these groups on our website (maybe with the help of HCI) and will notify the community when this happens. Pictures of the event here. Griff was also on site and you can check out his (better than mine) photos of the event on Locally Grown.