Does Your Site Serve Hmong Youth?

Attend the 10th Annual Hmong Resource Fair on October 1st! The mission of the Hmong Resource Fair is to provide resources and assistance to members of the Hmong community and to those who work with them.

The Fair brings health, education, employment, housing and a variety of other resources to you every year. The Hmong Resource Fair is committed to providing opportunities and a source of networking with local and national organizations for the community. Through strong partnerships and sponsorships, and the support of our community, Hmong Resource Fair works to make many informational resources free and accessible to the Hmong community and the public.

Taking Bolder Actions: Engaging Youth, Families and Community Members in Solutions

Changing the way you do business means changing who is involved in identifying community issues, as well as who is active in taking action toward solutions. Leaders need to engage youth, families and community leaders as organizers, planners and advocates by ensuring ongoing opportunities for leadership and participation. It's important to have strategies that reach all, not just a few. We'll highlight the work and tools of three Ready by 21 National Partners - America's Promise Alliance, Search Institute and United Way Worldwide - and discuss ways to ensure that your work is engaging youth, families and community leaders to the fullest.

Mark your calendar for September 27, 2011, 3 PM ET, and don't forget to register for this FREE webinar today to learn about taking Bolder Actions in your community!

2011 ACT Report

Here is the 2011 ACT report on Minnesota. It provides up to date information about one aspect of college-readiness: http://www.act.org/news/data/11/states/pdf/Minnesota.pdf

Ready by 21 Webinar on July 26th

The Ready by 21 Partnership is committed to meeting leaders where they are, challenging them to do more, and helping them build the capacity to do so. Included in this endeavor is our free Ready by 21 Webinar series, aimed at introducing participants to the core components of Ready by 21. The webinar series is designed around the Ready by 21 Leadership Capacity areas (the 4Bs): Building Broader Partnerships, Setting Bigger Goals, Using Better Data for Decision Making, and Implementing Bolder Strategies. In our webinar series, we will provide an opportunity to learn the basics of the Ready by 21 Strategies via 3 part modules. Each module will consist of one introductory webinar, one webinar focused on a leadership capacity, and a focused webinar on a related tool or resource. We hope you can join us for this exciting series! Click here to register or contact Kiley Bednar at Kiley@forumfyi.org with any questions.

Win Airline tickets for your program!

From Southwest Airlines --

"In honor of our 40^th Anniversary, we want to spread the LUV even further to the communities we serve by giving 40 deserving nonprofit organizations the chance to win 40 roundtrip tickets each—that’s 1,600 tickets total. Starting July 12 through the end of day on July 14, nonprofit organizations focused on community initiatives that concentrate on education, diversity, military, environment, or families facing serious illness can submit a photo illustrating the positive work they do in the community along with their compelling story to showingluvfor40years@wnco.com to explain how they will use the 40 tickets to achieve the organization’s missions in the community."

You can learn more at http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blog/showing-luv-communities-40-years

‘Beyond the Numbers’ a documentary film project

Opportunity for youth with University of Minnesota students:

How are students interacting with ‘the numbers’ in their classrooms and schools?
What happens when ‘the numbers’ drive our education?

The Youth Education Justice Initiative (YEJI) is creating a short documentary film exploring the violence that occurs when students are reduced to numbers in their classrooms and schools. This project is being funded by the Summer 612 youth violence prevention campaign. We are working with youth to capture the stories that get silenced by “the numbers” in our education system: test scores, GPA, class rank, application fees, account numbers, student ID tags, graduation rates, school assessments, neighborhood demographics, etc.

This film is being produced collaboratively by students and a community filmmaker. The project will build the skills of youth to create their own media. Numbers do not have voices-Youth Do! Film is a medium through which youth can project those voices to a broad audience and become participants in the dialogues around education from which they are often excluded.

We have worked closely with youth from the Minneapolis Youth Congress and the Whose University? Campaign at the University of Minnesota to develop the vision for the film. These young people are at differing points in their experience in the education system- some are in high school, some have graduated, some are pursuing post secondary education. We are currently looking for a few more youth who are excited about exploring these issues and being a part of a collaborative film project to join the process. If you, or youth you are connected to, are interested in being a part of this project please contact YEJI ---Hana Worku and/or Jake Virden-----by
the end of this week, Friday, July 15th. The summer is moving quickly and so is this film!

Participants are committing to attend regular Saturday meetings and filming sessions that will be scheduled by the group and dependent on the availability of interviewees.

This work will be engaging and fast paced!
Hana Worku- haworku@gmail.com
Jake Worku- jakevirden@gmail.com

BABY PICS!!!

To illustrate how much we’ve grown over the year we’re asking Promise Fellows & Supervisors to send a baby picture (of yourself, under the age of 5) to Rachel Ayoub (email Promisefellow@mnyipa.org or mail to 1494 Grand Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105), with the subject line: BABY PICTURE OF (your name) by Friday, July 22nd! Can't wait to see all your cute faces!