What Can You Promise?
Community leaders | Young People | Parents/Caring Adults
BUSINESS LEADERS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
The private sector can serve as a powerful advocate and agent of change for young people. Locally, businesses are at the heart of community progress, always helping to ensure a better quality of life for families.
Here are some actions businesses can take:
- Train and support employees and future retirees to bring their skills and experience into the classroom by serving as adjunct teachers, starting a second career in teaching, and volunteering as mentors and tutors.
- Help to defray the high cost of quality child care and early childhood education through employer-matched flexible spending accounts (allowing employees to set aside pre-tax dollars for child care and early childhood education).
- Offer flexible options for addressing dependent care needs and participation in school- and community-related activities.
- Coordinate volunteer opportunities for employees and allow them a specific amount of paid time (e.g., one hour per week) to serve children and families in need.
- Invest in youth-led service through partnerships and financial support for global, national, and local organizations that engage young people in quality volunteering and service-learning programs.
EDUCATORS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
Schools must challenge students to reach their highest potential and work with communities to provide them the resources to do so. Here are the ways educators can improve educational outcomes for students:
- Offer comprehensive support services to young people and their families, especially youth at risk of failure or dropping out (and those who have already dropped out).
- Ensure that young people have safe places that promote their academic and social development when they are out of school.
- Limit the availability and promotion of non-nutritious foods on school grounds and increase access to opportunities for physical fitness during the school day.
- Expand the integration of academic curriculum with community service by working with youth-serving organizations to provide service-learning opportunities to students during and after school.
- Take concrete actions to improve high school graduation, such as:
- Develop and implement literacy plans for every school, district and state to improve the reading and writing skills of secondary school students
- Develop and implement state-level integrated longitudinal data systems to track the progress of every student over time and make better decisions on how to help every student succeed
- Create early-warning systems to identify students at risk of dropping out well before they exit the school system
- Improve evaluation and research on effective strategies to promote high school graduation
- Align high school graduation standards with college entrance requirements and employer expectations to ensure that curricula are rigorous and relevant and that students are successful in life after graduation
- Provide all students, especially those at risk of dropping out, with Personal Graduation Plans and connect them with support needed to graduate
FOUNDATIONS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
Foundations have targeted a significant amount of funding to a wide variety of programs serving children and youth. However, the needs of children and families can rarely be met by the programs of any single foundation. To better address these needs, foundations can:
- Prioritize and fund multi-sector collaboration to meet the holistic needs of young people.
- Help service providers demonstrate results by providing sufficient funding to conduct rigorous outcome measurement and connect grantees with the technical expertise necessary for quality evaluation.
- Invest additional resources in research and development, disseminate findings through quality training opportunities and provide funding incentives for the use of research-based best practices.
- Consider making grants over longer periods that diminish over time, allowing providers to develop and implement realistic sustainability plans, while enabling them to avoid dependence on a single source of funding.
YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
Organizations that serve youth are critical to helping young Americans achieve their potential. To strengthen their efforts to promote positive youth development efforts, youth-serving organizations can:
- Improve collaboration among organizations with distinct areas of expertise to provide young people a comprehensive array of opportunities for growth and development throughout their childhood and adolescence.
- Focus on young people who are unlikely to receive all Five Promises by placing special emphasis on providing them access to the resources they are lacking.
- Continue to invest in quality program models and ongoing staff development to ensure that young people receive high-quality developmental opportunities.
- Integrate family-centric approaches into service delivery models that traditionally focus primarily on youth.
- Train the next generation of leaders by creating youth advisory boards or giving seats to young people on boards of directors.
- Seek funding for evaluation from foundations and other funders, and then use the findings to improve service delivery and demonstrate impact.
FAITH LEADERS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
While different faiths have varying traditions and beliefs, a deeply rooted spirit of community and helping others is fundamental to them all. To expand their support for youth, congregations of faith can:
- Identify the needs of young people in the congregation and connect them to supports in the community so more children can receive the Five Promises.
- Inspire members to volunteer and connect them with opportunities to help others, such as serving as mentors and after-school tutors for young people.
- Use congregational buildings to provide safe places for children and youth during nonschool hours.
- Serve as the moral voice of the community, communicating the needs of young people to political and business leaders and mobilizing their support.
COMMUNITY LEADERS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
In every community, resources exist to help address the needs of young people. Every community should develop a formal mechanism to engage all sectors to work together to support their youth. Specifically, communities can:
- Develop and implement a comprehensive plan for identifying and meeting the needs of children, youth and families.
- Launch an awareness campaign to raise the visibility of children's needs in the community and the services available to meet them.
- Conduct a robust study on the presence/absence of the Five Promises.
- Develop a structure, such as a youth advisory council, to involve young people in community decision-making.
YOUNG PEOPLE: WHAT YOU CAN DO
Our nation simply cannot solve the myriad of social problems young people face without the commitment and leadership of our youth themselves. Young people can:
- Identify problems in the community and design service-learning projects to solve them.
- Advocate by communicating with public officials to ensure that the decisions they make address the needs of youth.
- Volunteer to mentor a younger child or serve as a peer counselor, and help fulfill the Five Promises for him or her through programs at school or in the community, or by working with adult allies to create them.
- Reach out to caring adults who are already a part of their lives and engage them in an informal mentoring relationship.
- Spread the message of the importance of the Five Promises.
PARENTS AND OTHER CARING ADULTS: WHAT YOU CAN DO
Children and youth can best receive the resources they need to succeed when parents and many others join together. Here are several ways that parents and other caring adults can help young people succeed:
- Be a mentor.
- Know where children are and who they are with when they are not in school, and make sure they have a safe place to go.
- Make sure children have regular doctor and dentist visits, exercise regularly and eat three healthy meals a day.
- Be an advocate by asking your school system about graduation rates, pushing for a curriculum that is rigorous and relevant and making sure there are enough places and meaningful activities in your community for every child's out-of-school time.
- Teach children what it means to be a good member of the community by talking to youth about current events, volunteering in the community and encouraging children to do the same.