Community
Connections
THE POWER OF PARTNERING

Campaign Leverages Partnerships to Highlight Youth Strengths and Build Relationships

Denver Schools Partner to Improve Parent-Staff Relationship

Community Partners Spread Positive Youth Development in Jefferson County

Cherry Creek School District Engages Community to Support Prevention

Greeley's Youth Service Providers Stay Connected, Stay Funded Through YouthNet

Asset Builders of the Summit Partners with Media and Business to Promote Message

Campaign Leverages Partnerships to Highlight Youth Strengths and Build Relationships

The One Million Voices Campaign, launched by Assets for Colorado Youth (ACY), is an effort to change the perception of young people from being full of problems to being full of promise. As part of the campaign, voices expressing the strengths of young people are being collected from both youth and adults to allow young people to express their abilities and to reframe how adults think about the young people they live and work with. The transformation that occurs through the process of voicing strengths has caused changes in behavior at individual and programming levels in the interest of supporting youth.

While one million voices may seem like an aggressive benchmark, the goal of the campaign is to engage as many individuals in Colorado as possible in a relatively short period of time to bring about a broad-reaching change in thinking. To do this, ACY has partnered with youth serving organizations and schools statewide to participate in the process of voicing strengths. These partnerships serve to add to the momentum of the campaign, but also strengthen the relationship between ACY and partnering organizations, resulting in increased communication and the development of mutual opportunities beyond the campaign.

The "pass it on" nature of the campaign readily lends itself to the growth of the message, and participating organizations are charged with engaging at least one or two of their partners in the campaign to speed the spread of the movement. Through the campaign ACY has been successful in engaging more than 50 new partners as a result of the organic growth of the message and new connections made through pre-existing partnerships.

The outcome of all this partnering and leveraging has been the collection of approximately 12,000 new voices and the establishment of relationships that can help to advance the work of the organizations involved.

Read more about how the One Million Voices for Youth Campaign is impacting communities in the Summer 2003 issue of Youth Assets Quarterly.

For more information on the campaign visit www.millionvoicesforyouth.org.