Strengthening the Rural-Urban
YOUTH
Connection

Expectations were high as 35 youth and community developers from Alabama, Florida and Georgia gathered for the second round of "Strengthening the Rural-Urban Connection," focusing on youth development.

"I´d like to see something...some concept or approach...that I´m totally unaware of...I am hoping for a totally new perspective," said Tony LaGreca, Gainesville, Florida.

"I want to find out how to move youth service organizations into community change agents," added Sherry Allen, Athens, Georgia. "We need to find a way to hear the voice of youth...we talk about youth involvement, but most of the time, youth are not really at the table."

"In a way, youth development and feeding the hungry are the same. There´s enough food to go around. The problem is getting it to where it is needed. It takes working together, overcoming turf wars, truly working together to identify the gaps."

Albert Fuller, Bronson, Florida

These and other aspirations opened the rural-urban roundtable retreat held in Eufaula, Alabama, with funding provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. For the next two days, the group would work together to transcend their rural-urban and youth-adult boundaries in order to learn from one another.

Rural-Urban Similarities and Differences
The opening activity defined numerous rural and urban issues, but it also defined the participants, as well. The majority were people who work on the front lines and in the trenches through a variety of youth development programs.

"It´s hard for a kid to do well in school when his family is barely making it from day to day," said one youth worker from Alabama. "We need economic development."

Another lamented, "I´ve had to turn away kids who were too far gone just so I could save the others."

When a director of a youth arts program suggested finding ways to camouflage labeled kids, the group asked her to explain. She said girls come to her program "who are abused, their mothers on drugs, they´re homeless, whatever...we need to find a way to disguise the fact that these kids are being targeted, so they don´t have to feel different."

The discussion on youth issues within the rural and urban contexts brought the group to general agreement. Clearly there was overwhelming similarity between rural and urban youth challenges. However, they acknowledged that rural areas have fewer resources such as professional training, fund developers, policy makers, and potential partnerships. The group also thought that cynicism and the race/class divide were more acute in rural communities.

The retreat was co-sponsored by the Southern Rural Development Center with work sessions facilitated by Heartland Center Co-Director Milan Wall and Gordon Goodwin, a Heartland Center board member and director of Development Solutions, Inc., in San Antonio, Texas. After only a few hours together, the participants were ready to move beyond their common challenges and were eager to share solutions.

Elements of Success in Youth Development
Group discovery and sharing solutions came through an exciting storytelling experience that captivated listeners and learners. Each person told a story of some successful youth development effort in which they had been personally involved. As the stories unfolded the listeners took notes on what they perceived as important elements for success. Later, these elements were paraphrased, compiled and organized by the entire group. After several hours of intense discussion and debate, the group had created a virtual recipe for successful youth development programs by defining a number of key ingredients.

Nearly every participant expressed praise and satisfaction for the work the group had accomplished through the "Elements of Success" exercise.

"I was struck by the success stories´ human face. Each person spoke of real life situations and had individual human beings on their minds when they told their stories," said one Florida participant.

They also enjoyed moving through the chaos of individual thinking toward group reasoning. Many people thought they could utilize the exercise back home and adapt it to different circumstances, such as designing an after-school program. One urban participant said that she had assumed there were huge differences between rural and urban youth development issues and programs, but that now she knows they can easily be offset.

Rural-Urban Partnerships and Action
The theme of collaboration carried over as the group agreed that the next step must be active partnerships among retreat participants and others back home. On the final day of the retreat, participants openly encouraged and challenged one another to maintain the momentum and cooperative spirit that had begun to evolve.

"If we put our assets together we could have a great program," said one participant.

Others responded, "I see long-term relationships developing.

"These elements of success can´t function without us working together."

Enthusiastically the group went to work on strategies for rural-urban action. Each participating state formed a rural-urban team which is eligible for an "action grant" of $3,000 to use as seed money for a collaborative youth development project. Initial ideas included formation of a statewide youth leadership program in Georgia, creating a rural-urban youth services network in Florida and developing a conflict resolution program involving theatrical presentations in Alabama.

"We need to show youth that they are stakeholders in the community and in the process."

Faye Singh, Fort Valley, Georgia

Throughout the roundtable retreat, program evaluators James Calvin of The Johns Hopkins University and Ron Hustedde of the University of Kentucky encouraged participants to reflect on what they were learning and experiencing. Calvin and Hustedde were fondly nicknamed "reflection coaches" as participants recorded their thoughts in individual participant journals and on graffiti boards that had been placed around the meeting room.

With these three new teams, funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation has enabled "Strengthening the Rural-Urban Connection" to help build collaborative community development efforts in 12 states: Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, South Dakota, Maine, New York, Alabama, Florida and Georgia. In February, the Massachusetts Rural Development will co-sponsor an additional Rural-Urban Leadership Institute, which will also focus on building collaborative relationships among community development organizations. Another such gathering is being planned in Nebraska.

For more information on the"Rural-Urban Connection"visit the web site at www.ruralurban.org or join our listserve by contacting ruconnections@agmail.ag.iastate.edu.