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To make sure every child is surrounded by positive influences, even more adults must dedicate themselves to Helping America's Youth. Adults need to care—to be aware of the challenges facing children, and take an active interest in their lives. Adults, and especially parents, should be reminded that they can teach kids healthy behavior by their own good example.
—First Lady Laura Bush

First Lady Laura Bush delivers keynote address at the HAY conference.

First Lady Laura Bush delivered the keynote address at the third regional conference on Helping America's Youth (HAY), held at Tennessee State University in Nashville on April 12, 2007. The HAY Initiative is a nationwide effort to raise awareness about the challenges facing the Nation's youth, particularly at-risk boys, and to motivate caring adults to connect with youth in three key areas: family, school, and community.

The conference featured presentations on the current status of youth and successful approaches for helping to make a difference in their lives. The conference also offered training on the online Community Guide to Helping America's Youth.

In his remarks to attendees, OJJDP Administrator
J. Robert Flores cited the Community Guide as an essential tool for identifying local resources and providing action plans for particular communities. He said:

The Community Guide provides strategies and interactive tools for communities to help youth. The Guide outlines a three-step process to help communities form a partnership and make it work, assess your community and connect its resources, and search for programs to help youth.

With its mapping function, the Community Guide puts information about Federal resources at your fingertips. Any one of you here today could identify your community on this system and generate maps and reports of Federal youth-serving grants that operate locally.

But as you all know, the Federal Government has little to do with most of the youth-serving programs and activities occurring in communities around the country. Some of the best resources operate under the radar. The Community Guide provides a method for storing and managing information about local youth-serving programs and other resources using a password-protected account that only you and your partners can use. To me, this is the most exciting part of the Community Guide to Helping America's Youth. It provides a powerful tool for communities to make the most of their existing resources and assets.

OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores addresses conference participants.

In a presentation titled "Overview of the Community Guide to Helping America's Youth," OJJDP Gang Program Coordinator Phelan Wyrick used a fictional town, Silver Beach, to illustrate how a community partnership might use the online Community Guide to help develop a coordinated and evidence-based response to a pressing youth issue: gang activity. Dr. Wyrick described a series of steps for addressing gang problems, including responding to an immediate incident of gang violence, developing a long-range plan, forming a working group, conducting a community assessment, mapping Federal resources, setting priorities, and searching for programs to help youth.

For additional information on the HAY Initiative and the conference (including the full text of the First Lady's remarks, a Webcast of proceedings, and slides from presentations by Dr. Wyrick and others), visit the HAY Web site at www.helpingamericasyouth.gov, click on "Conferences," and select the Nashville regional conference.