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On November 8, 2007, First Lady Laura Bush and OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores spoke in Dallas, TX, at the Fifth Regional Conference of Helping America's Youth (HAY). HAY is a nationwide effort, led by the First Lady, to raise awareness about the challenges facing youth (particularly at-risk boys) and to motivate caring adults to connect with youth in three key areas: family, school, and community.

Mrs. Bush complimented several initiatives that help young people. These included CeaseFire Illinois, a program that sends outreach workers—often former gang members—into neighborhoods to serve as role models of appropriate behavior, and MANA, which gives young Latina women support and guidance in avoiding risky behaviors and setting ambitious goals.

The First Lady praised HAY's online Community Guide to Helping America's Youth, which assists communities in forming effective partnerships and provides them with customized strategic planning tools and informational resources to enhance youth-serving efforts. The Community Guide, Mrs. Bush explained, "helps concerned adults learn more about the challenges that face children in their own communities."

Administrator Flores also recommended the Community Guide as an excellent source for identifying partners and resources. The guide, he noted, has a function that allows a user to find his or her community and generate maps and reports of youth-serving programs that operate in the area. It also provides a method for storing and managing information about local programs and resources. Flores remarked:

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. What better example to set for young people?

Importantly, Flores added, "the Community Guide includes a database of programs that have been evaluated and have demonstrated their effectiveness in helping youth." These programs were begun with input from Federal agencies, but most of them were developed locally. The Community Guide, Flores noted, assembles lists of programs, ranks them according to level of effectiveness, and provides several options for searching through them to find the ones that best fit the needs of a community. For example, users can search for programs that are designed to address specific risky behaviors such as gun possession or teen parenthood.

In closing, Flores urged the attendees, "If we hope to give our young people the best chance to succeed, we'll need a coordinated adult effort that cuts across all disciplines and all sectors of society." This is what HAY and its Community Guide to Helping America's Youth are about, he said: connecting youth to caring and committed adults in communities, in schools, and in families.

For additional information on the Helping America's Youth Initiative, visit the HAY Web site. For video clips of the remarks by Mrs. Bush and Administrator Flores, and much more from the conference, visit HAY's Dallas Regional Conference page.

First Lady Laura Bush speaks during a conference on Helping America's Youth Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007, at Dallas Baptist University in Dallas. (White House photo by Shealah Craighead.)

After Mrs. Laura Bush addressed the conference, members of the YA Crew perform a dance routine. (White House photo by Shealah Craighead.)