www.seattleworks.org

What is your "Year Up"?

This morning I attended the Seattle Foundation's Annual Meeting. For those of you outside the nonprofit world, The Seattle Foundation is our community foundation. They manage and pool resources to invest in the community. Seattle Works is a recipient of their funding--we love them because they believe we are the best people to determine how to leverage their resources. Thank you!

Anyway, the goal of this morning's meeting was to celebrate their great work in the community. The keynote speaker was a guy from Boston who runs an organization called Year Up--a one-year intensive education and apprenticeship program for urban young adults aged 18-24. Year Up's program recognizes that both job skills (technical and professional) and higher education are necessary to provide a viable path to economic self-sufficiency dedicated to supporting at risk kids. A very noble cause, a great model of programming and a very inspirational story. (there are some staggering facts about urban young adults, check them out http://www.yearup.org/aboutus/socialneed.html).

He ended his talk with a question for the audience--what is your "year up" experience. Who was the teacher that spent time with you and inspired your success? What was the educational class that led you in the direction of your passion? What was the thing that got you to where you are at today?

As I was driving back, I thought about my "Year Up" experience. In high school my DECA teacher-Bob Pressey--connected me with the Federal Way Chamber of Commerce and their President Bob Green to work with a community team to incorporate the city. It was a great learning experience for me in a variety of ways. It was my first introduction to local politics, it taught me how to network and the importance of a plan to get things done. A few  months later, we were successful in our bid to incorporate as a city.

This experience led me to a summer job with the Chamber, starting college knowing I wanted to major in business and 4 years later it was the foundation for being hired on the staff of the Chamber.  I went on to be the President of the Chamber and truly believe without this experience I would not be where I am today as a professional and a community member. Thank you to DECA, Pressey and Bob Green for giving me my "Year Up".

What's your "Year Up"?
ACW

A Day on Lake Washington part 2

I'm a little slow on the draw but a commenter asked me to talk about the difference in the Bellevue and Seattle Shorelines. Before I continue I must admit that I only saw a fraction of the Seattle and Bellevue shoreline, I spent most of my time looking at the Renton shoreline. The major difference that I saw between Seattle and Bellevue is that the Seattle shoreline (or the portion I saw) had development that was done prior to major regulation of the shoreline or the Shoreline Master plan. The Bellevue shoreline (or the portion I saw) was more consistent with the Shoreline Master plan.

On the other hand Renton is right in the middle, you have some older homes that has shoreline development prior to the shoreline master plan and newer developments that are consistent with the plan. Overall as I said in a earlier post this was a wonderful experience- even if it was freezing in the morning- and I'm glad I did it.

~Ed

Board Service is where it's at!

Props to some of Seattle Works most recent Bridge graduates for taking the ball and running with it. These folks have are serving on boards ranging from the Transitional Resources to Family Works. Board Service is a great way to have input on agencies that impact the community and meet some wonderful people.

Congrats you guys!

~Ed

More on those Millenials

I was just on the blog of a sister organization, Metro Volunteers (Denver), and their top post was also about recent coverage of the Millenials and their community invovlement.

http://metrovolunteers.blogspot.com/

There's a recent study from the Case Foundation noting that:
"Millenials are set apart from other generations by their cause lifestyle-a youth that is infused with giving and volunteering, eventually complemented by careers dedicated to causes. They are a generation defined by the fervent belief they can change the world one donation, one voluntary activity, or one purchase at a time. They are less interested in and adept at interacting with government agencies and more interested in hands-on ways of improving the lives of people domestically and internationally." ("Social Citizens," The Case Foundation, 2008)

Even better, it's written by a proud Millenial who's tired of her generation and their "excessive sense of self-worth" getting knocked around.

- Tara
(a proud X'er who's no slacker)

Gen X, so yesterday--everyone is talking about the Millenials

Last week on the News Hour, Judy Woodruf interviewed the authors of a new book called "The Millenial Makeover. How the Next Generation of Young People are Shaping the American Political Scene and Community".

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html

It was very interesting. I'm generally very skeptical of Boomers describing anyone other than their own demographic co-hort, but I thought it was well done. 

Seattle Works is very interested in the thoughts and perspectives of millenials--take a listen and tell me what you think.
- ACW

Evil Ivy

Teams “New to Seattle" and  "Friends you haven't met yet" gathered at a  Hot Project to help EarthCorps seek and destroy the EVIL IVY. We learned a lot about invasive species in the Pacific Northwest, which includes ivy among many other plants. It was a long day of hard work that left us all proud and exhausted. This was my easiest day as Team Captain because EarthCorps was so organized.

Ever since our mission, I have been seeing the evil ivy everywhere in the city. When I was with Katie (New to Seattle team member) we saw a particularly bad ivy infestation that was taking over a beautiful old tree. The only thing Katie could say was "well, that tree is a goner." I have almost resorted to keeping a lopper and other gardening tools in the trunk of my car to save these poor trees!

All I can say is, don’t plant ivy!

Natasha