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• Building & Sustaining Partnerships
• Community Assessment
• Partnership Resource Library

Building & Sustaining Partnerships

No one person or organization can provide for all the needs of a community's young people. Supporting them fully requires collaboration among schools, youth-serving organizations, faith-based institutions, businesses, and government agencies.

Strong partnerships with relevant organizations and agencies in your community are critical because working together will help you deliver consistent messages and reach youth through a variety of channels. It also presents valuable opportunities to share resources, develop joint goals and objectives, and learn from each other.

Building Partnerships

Identify Key Partners

Partnerships are powerful tools that can help organizations maximize their resources. If your organization is in the initial stages of partnership development, the following chart will help you locate the skills and resources required to launch collaborative relationships.

What Skills or Resources are Needed?	Where Can We Find Those Skills/Resources?	Who Can Contribute Those Skills/Resources?
Community leadership	Community coalitions and existing community systems	Heads of community groups and associations, faith-based organizations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses
Funding strategies	Federal, state, and local government agencies; community foundations; hospitals; colleges; businesses; and service organizations	Grant writers, business leaders, development professionals, foundation officers, and religious leaders
Community assessment, collecting and analyzing data	Colleges, public health departments, school districts, human services agencies, and community planning agencies	Social scientists, statisticians, and program evaluators

Follow Ten Steps to Effective Partnership Building

Listed below are some ideas from skilled partnership builders about partnership development. For more information, see our Partnership Resource Library.

• Identify your community's positive and negative youth-related challenges.
• Confirm what entities are involved in creating and maintaining activities around these issues. See if partnerships already exist, and consider whether you should join or build something new.
• If forming something new, convene a steering committee to define your purpose and desired outcomes.
• Decide which of the following your organization will be doing:
  • Conducting activities or events, such as information and referrals, poster contests, and health fairs.
  • Delivering services and/or programs that serve individuals and families.
  • Mobilizing the community around specific issues.
  • Developing a comprehensive strategy by implementing multi-faceted plans.
• Craft strategies or approaches—plans to guide your activities and accomplish your organization's proposed outcomes.
• Develop activities—actions to achieve these outcomes.
• Determine who in your community needs to be involved in the planning and implementation of your organization's activities. (Remember to be creative and think outside the box when considering new community partnerships.)
• Keep in mind that partnerships should represent the racial, ethnic, and cultural characteristics of your community.
• Once specific people or organizations are identified, consider:
• What members can contribute (e.g., staff time, money, work space, data, media relations, credibility, skills).
• Whether members represent a variety of constituent groups or cultural perspectives, and take note if any perspectives are missing.
• Whether certain organizations or individuals need incentives to join and what they will gain by joining the effort (e.g., increased skills, networking, access to policymakers).
• Create flexible partnerships so they can expand, contract, and form new relationships as your initiative develops.

Think Outside the Box When Building Relationships

When considering partnerships that address youth-related issues, at the top of your list should be:

• Businesses and community organizations
• Youth and families
• Media organizations
• Libraries, parks, and recreation departments
• Public health departments and health care providers
• Schools
• Human services agencies
• Elected or appointed officials
• Faith-based organizations
• Cooperative extension offices
• Law enforcement and juvenile justice agencies

Organizations and agencies you may not have considered can provide opportunities for youth to participate and give back in new and creative ways. Consider the following groups and links:

Youth Councils of Local Workforce Investment Boards (LWIBs)
LWIBs support the development of a well-prepared, educated, and adaptable workforce to meet the current and future needs of local employers. These organizations are required to have Youth Councils, which focus on youth employment-related issues.

Neighborhood Networks
Offers adult job-training classes, provides after-school activities and mentoring programs, and operates computer-training programs that target senior citizens.

YouthBuild
Assists adjudicated youth, youth aging out of foster care, and out-of-school youth obtain high school diplomas or GED credentials while providing opportunities for them to construct or rehabilitate affordable housing in their communities.

Job Corps
Provides vocational and academic training to young people aged 16 through 24.

Weed and Seed
An innovative, comprehensive, and multi-agency approach to law enforcement, crime prevention, and community revitalization that "weeds" out criminals and drug abusers in a community and "seeds" much needed human services.

AmeriCorps
Tutors and mentors disadvantaged youth, fights illiteracy, improves health services, builds affordable housing, teaches computer skills, cleans parks and streams, manages or operates after-school programs, and helps communities respond to disasters.

Learn and Serve
Supports efforts that engage students in community service and civic involvement.

Drug Education for Youth (DEFY)
Provides youth from military families, aged 9-12, with the tools they need to resist drugs, gangs, and alcohol.

Safe Communities
Community transportation injury prevention programs that expand resources and partnerships, increase program visibility, and position transportation and traffic safety within the context of injury prevention.

Consider Adult/Youth Partnerships

Engaging young people in partnership activities makes sense because they can provide their own perspective on your initiatives, and help you create programs that hit the mark. Giving young people the chance to exercise and build leadership skills can ultimately help them become responsible, civic-minded adults.

There are many roles for teens and young adults in partnerships. They can serve as media and community spokespersons, help develop Web sites and Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and Facebook pages, and help recruit other young people in the community.

How do you begin engaging teens and young adults?

• Include adult partners who understand the value of engaging youth and will continue supporting their long-term involvement in partnership activities.
• Establish relationships with youth-serving organizations. Many represent global youth concerns and can put you in touch with youth leaders. Engage youth early to help craft goals, objectives, strategies, and activities that are relevant to their needs.
• Provide youth with training and guidance to better ensure their full participation in partnership planning, and supply similar training to adults who don't have direct experience working with young people.
• Offer incentives, awards, salary, or recognition for teen partnership involvement. Consider the logistics of involving youth in meetings. Do they need transportation? Are meetings held after school, in the evenings, or on weekends so they can participate? Is child care needed?

Sustaining Partnerships

Once your partnership is off the ground, collaboration across organizations is on-target, and programs and activities are being discussed and launched, how do you keep the momentum going? This section describes the foundation you need to keep that momentum going and supplies concrete strategies that can be incorporated into partnership maintenance activities.

Use These Guiding Principles for Sustaining Partnerships

What are the elements that make long-term collaboration successful?

1. A shared vision, mission statement, and goals and plans. Acknowledge that these tasks will need to be revisited as the partnership fulfills desired outcomes.
2. Realistic expectations from all partners.
3. Long- and short-term goals with achievements all can share. Build on your successes as you strive to achieve the next set of goals.
4. An examination of the community's strengths, not just its needs.
5. Recognition that many programs promote the growth of healthy young people, and that programs working together can make a tremendous impact.
6. Involvement of residents from the very beginning of the partnership. The community needs to have substantial input into the assessment process, the selection of priority issues, and program content and methodology.
7. A real understanding of, and respect for, the community's beliefs and experiences. Spend time with residents, ask questions, and use key informants to learn more about the community. Build trust before taking on highly controversial issues. Engage all sectors of the community.
8. Respect for each member's personal and professional obligations.
9. Time for meaningful discussions so that all people feel they are being heard. Respond actively to all concerns and determine what needs to be done.
10. Clear communication. Use straightforward, culturally appropriate, meaningful language—not jargon—in all materials.

Follow Ten Steps to Managing Partnerships

Similar to the Ten Steps to Effective Partnership Building, provided below is "nuts-and-bolts" information on how to effectively manage partnerships and collaborations.

1. Select a leader or steering committee with a clear understanding of the group's mission. Leadership should be able to:
   • encourage participation from all members;
   • structure fair and productive group interactions;
   • negotiate among organizations and individuals with different agendas; and
   • maintain enthusiasm through good and difficult times.
2. Establish ground rules and policies for how to conduct meetings, create records, make decisions, and work with the media. Create an open environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves. Establish early on processes for addressing disagreements and reaching resolution.
3. Create an action plan that identifies who will do what, how it will be done, and by when.
4. Periodically review the action plan and analyze its effectiveness.
5. If your plan has not been effective, consider what factors have contributed to its limited success, and rethink future strategies. If your plan has been successful, assess what factors contributed to this success.
6. When recruiting new partners:
   • Consider collaborations with national service programs and non-affiliated agencies and businesses.
   • Find out who might be interested and receptive to your cause. Then make phone calls.
   • Describe project goals so prospective partners have a clear understanding of who you are and what you're about. Point out how and where your goals and theirs may overlap.
7. Plan for—and expect—membership turnover. Keep a list of potential members and maintain regular communication to involve them at different stages.
8. Recognize the relationship between administrative barriers and project work. Discuss those barriers, and do what is possible to address them.
9. Encourage group cohesion by supporting relationship building within the group and the larger community.
10. Make sure to celebrate successes.

 

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