A City Fit for Kids, part four:
Building a Better Boise
For the young people involved in the summit and other recent activities to promote youth involvement in the community, these exercises in citizenship feel new, refreshing, and important. Before attending her first youth summit, Jessi Bodily, a senior at Kuna High School, never imagined that adults would pay attention to what a group of kids might say. “Even though I am a teen, I had disregarded our power,” she says. “I hadn’t realized that we might get involved to solve these issues, and that it could be fun.”
With a strong push from Mayor Brent Coles, Boise is attempting to develop its youth resources in a deliberate, focused way. Using research on resiliency developed by the Search Institute, based in Minneapolis, Boise is working to increase the factors known to support the healthy development of young people.
The Search Institute has identified 40 specific assets as the building blocks of positive development. To gauge a community’s health, the institute surveys teens about the good things in their lives, asking, for example, if they receive love and support from family members; if they feel valued by their community; if they feel safe at home, at school, in their neighborhood; if they feel optimistic about the future. The more assets young people acknowledge, the better their chances of avoiding high-risk behavior, succeeding in school, and becoming adults who will contribute to their community.
A recent Search Institute survey of more than 5,000 Boise-area teens shows local youth scoring slightly above their peers nationwide on the assets scorecard. Boise-area youth report an average of 19.3 of the 40 assets in their lives, compared with a national average of 18. In academics, too, Boise students tend to outscore their peers on national and statewide achievement tests.
That’s good news — but not good enough, according to Mayor Coles. Under ideal conditions, young people will enjoy at least 31 assets, Search Institute researchers conclude.
Coles is using the assets survey to plan how to bolster support for young people. Under the asset labeled “family life,” for instance, 70 percent of Boise-area youth say they enjoy the support of their family. “That’s great, but it tells me that 30 percent of our young people need help,” Coles says. More telling, the mayor adds, is the measurement of "positive family communication." Only 32 percent of teens surveyed say they seek advice from parents. "That means they’re not talking about serious issues at home," Coles says. The mayor is also troubled by a low percentage of teens — 20 percent — who say they feel valued by the community.
To show young people that they do matter, Coles has successfully lobbied for an ordinance that calls for a young person to be appointed to each of nine city commissions and boards. The youth members are expected to voice the needs of their peers, so that city funds will be spent on projects that will directly benefit young residents of Boise.
"When we’re planning for new parks and recreation facilities," the mayor explains, "we need to be able to have young people involved in the planning and the debate over how to use resources. They’ll need to do their homework, to go to their colleagues and gather opinions and ideas. We need to show them that their voice is important. The city that we’re planning today," he stresses, "we’re planning for the next generation."
Already, for example, young residents of Boise have lobbied successfully for the city to build a skate board park. By having youth members serve on a variety of working commissions, Coles hopes to continue refining the city so that everything from arts programs to new parks are designed with young people in mind.
Coles has also challenged the business community to connect with young people in positive ways. Building positives into the lives of youth doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, he points out. "At the end of the day, a lot of adults go inside their houses but not into their neighborhoods. We need to encourage adults to talk to kids, one on one. Just have a conversation. It seems so simple." A father of five, Coles acknowledges, "All kids are different. Some will talk to their parents and some won’t. They need another adult in their lives."
Bringing more youth voices into community affairs is an idea that will take time and an investment in training. "Young people need to know how to work with adults in a group setting," Denton acknowledges. She tries to build training into service opportunities to give teens a better chance of being successful volunteers. Community Youth Connection also provides training to help build teens’ leadership skills "so they can play an effective role," adds Ho-Setantha.
What can organizations get back if they decide to include teens?
Seventeen-year-old Jessi Bodily is often the lone youth voice when she attends meetings as part of her internship at Idaho Public Television. But she finds that the adults around the conference table are interested in her ideas. "We young people are just starting to look at life and all the things we might want to do," she says. "We can offer a different perspective. We bring creativity, energy, and passion, and sometimes that can inspire others."
