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Alameda Youth Care Project

Essay Instructions:
For this assignment, you are asked to describe a proposed project intended to benefit children, youth, and/or families in a particular area of CYC practice, building on and mobilizing the assets in your community. The project you propose should be discussed in terms of the ecological, strength-based, and developmental perspectives explored throughout CYC 100A. In designing your project, you may choose the same area of CYC practice that you focused on in Assignment 2, or you may choose another area of CYC practice that interests you. Whichever area of CYC practice you focus on, remember that the focus of this assignment is not to describe an existing project in your chosen area of practice, but to envision a new project, and to ground that project in a description of your community's strengths. To complete this assignment, use the model presented in Kretzmann and McKnight's (2005) publication,Discovering community power: A guide to mobilizing local assets and your organization's capacity. You will complete the assignment in two steps. Keeping your chosen area of CYC practice in mind, you will first complete a community asset map. To develop the community asset map, use the model provided on page 16 as a guide to researching and mapping your community's assets. You are not expected to produce an exhaustive community map for this assignment. Nonetheless, in accordance with the model provided, you should identify a total of at least 10 associations, physical spaces, institutions, individuals, and businesses in the local economy (aim for two in each category) that could be assets in developing your CYC project. You will discuss aspects of your community map in your final paper, but you will include the map itself as an Appendix. To create an electronic version of your map, you can adapt the map on page 16 of Kretzmann & McKnight (2005), or you can use the free mapping software located at http://vue(dot)tufts(dot)edu/about/index.cfm Next, you will design and describe a CYC project (e.g., a community-based drop-in program for street-involved youth, an outreach for immigrant parents and children, for adolescent girls with eating disorders) that (a) responds to the needs and strengths of the chosen population; (b) builds on existing community assets; and (c) has the potential to strengthen the community as a whole. You can use the questions on pages 4-14 of Section 1 of Discovering Community Power as a way of assessing the extent to which your proposed project builds on community strengths (associations, physical spaces, institutions, individuals, local businesses). Once you have completed your community asset map and designed your project, write a paper of 1500-2000 words (6-8 typed, double-spaced, 12 pt font pages, plus references). The table below can serve as a rough guide for organizing your paper: Section of Paper Approximate Length of Section Provide a brief introduction that identifies your chosen area of practice, the population you are focusing on, and the project you are proposing. 150-200 words Describe your community, including relevant demographic and statistical information on your community, but focusing primarily on the community map you developed (the map itself will be an Appendix to your paper). 350-500 words Describe your proposed project, including the area of CYC practice it relates to, the strengths and challenges of the population served, the purpose of the project, and how the project builds on community assets. In discussing the relationship of your project to community assets, discuss at least one association, physical space, institution, individual, and local business that you identified in your community asset map. Be as specific as possible in describing how your project builds on the community assets you are focusing on. 500-600 words Discuss the relevance of your project in terms of the ecological, strength-based, and developmental perspectives, and in relation to theories and processes of individual and social change. In your discussion, cite at least four relevant course readings, articles, book chapters, and/or credible websites. 350-500 words Include a brief conclusion, in which you summarize the intent of your proposed project, how it builds on community assets, and its relevance in the context of contemporary CYC practice. 150-200 words Save your assignment as either a Word or RTF document with the filename "Assignment5-yourname" and put it in the Assignment Drop Box. Grading Criteria: Content (15 marks) -Clearly identifies area of practice, population of focus, and intent of project -Describes the community characteristics and strengths, based on a community asset map in the Appendix that identifies at least 10 associations, physical spaces, institutions, individuals, and local businesses -Proposes a proposed project that clearly responds to the needs and strengths of the chosen population and the community -Identifies the relationship of the proposed project to at least five associations, physical spaces, institutions, individuals, and/or local businesses -Provides a clear discussion of the proposed project from the ecological, strength-based, and developmental perspectives -Integrates course materials and discussions, citing at least four relevant course readings, articles, book chapters, or credible websites Presentation (10 marks) -Structure of paper and presentation of material is clear, logical and congruent. -Introduction provides a succinct overview of the intention and structure of the paper. -Conclusion clearly summarizes the main points/findings. -Spelling, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, pagination, punctuation and clarity of writing are at a 1st year University level. -References in text and in bibliography are complete and according to APA standards
Essay Sample Content Preview:

Alameda Youth Care Project
Name:
Course:
Professor Name:
(July 23, 2012)
Alameda Youth Care Project
Introduction
Youths in the world are facing difficult challenges in acquiring job opportunities. However, rather than the youth being idled, there is need to seek ways of helping them. Therefore, Brighter Future is an Alameda County based project designed to use the principles of Asset Based Community development to develop strong communities, do away with relapses, and connect people through service to their community. This is a youth based project for this county. My research showed that youth in this community are having no jobs because of lack of experience, incapability of competition with the skilled and experienced workers, mismatch in education and the job demands, and poor communication skills amongst them and the community.
This project aims to connect the youth to natural support systems and other social networks in their local community. However, they are to make use of the asset mapping strategy that involve communication with the community through research and surveys concerned with the needs and assets of the community. Apparently, by investing in this project, the community is able to have a rich resource database for meeting the needs of the youth in Alameda. Therefore through the rich information collected from the community concerning the need of the youth and asset mapping, the community creates opportunities for the youth through connections with the volunteer opportunities, jobs and housing (Alexander, 2012).

Source: Kretzmann and McKnight (2005)
Associations
Includes business, anti-crime, anti-drug and religious groups
Institutions
Includes media, schools and hospitals
Individuals
Includes natural habitats such as forests, playgrounds and camping sites
Local Economy
Includes the non-profit making organizations, merchants, banks, markets and foundations
Physical Space
Just like the individual groups, it includes natural habitats, forests, playgrounds and camping sites.
Description of my Community
Alameda Community is dominated by the youths who are unemployed. However, a good population of the community is employed and they are mostly the adults group who own businesses and most of the entrepreneurs are the adults. The community consists of religious groups showing that most of the people are God-fearing while other groups present are the anti-drug groups, the anti-crime groups too. The population of the community is around 10, 000 residents.
Large of this population are involved in business and ignoring other income generating activities such as taking care of the forests, being involved in pleasure during boring times, volunteer activities. However, some of the available opportunities available in Alameda include: Merchants, banks, markets, Hospitals, schools and the media. In terms of poverty, statistics show that most of the youth and the population as a whole are stricken with poverty. More than half of the area's youth group above the age of 18 years live below the poverty line. However, the level of unemployment in Alameda was only 7 percent in a recent study in 2006 but since then the level of unemployment has arisen. Consequently, over the years there have been drastic changes in the rate of poverty in Alameda.
The community's demographic data show that the children under the age of 18 are dominant in most of the households, an indication that the rate of youth growth in Alameda is likely to increase soon tremendously. Apparently, employment statistics show that most of the employees are likely to be employed in the banking, hospitals and other non-profit making industries that further raises the concerns over the experience of the youth even though they posses the skills in those jobs. However, about 20 percent of the adults are in the banking industries.
Alameda is among the country's poorest communities often cited for poor utilization of resources and skills. Nearly half of all the households that account for 49 percent earn less than $20,000 while almost 80 percent of the population earn less than $50,000. By comparing these statistics to other communities, it is true that only a third of all the population earn less than $20,000 and only 60 percent earn less than $70,000.
Based on the above information, some of the community's strengths include the presence of hospitals, schools, banks, skills and knowledge amongst the youth. These strengths need to be used to help the youth realize their dreams and nevertheless the youth can use the physical space such as playgrounds available in Alameda to engage in sports as well as camping sites for enjoyment.
Description
Brighter Future is an Alameda County based project designed to use the principles of Asset Based Community development to develop strong communities, do away with relapses, and connect people through service to their community. This is a youth based project for this county. Consequently, this project aims to connect the youth to using their skills and knowledge to taking advantage of the opportunities available in Alameda community. Some of the opportunities include: natural habitats, camping sites, play grounds where the youths could keep themselves...
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