Huntsville's Promise
Our Children Our Future
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Asset of the Week Introduction When we consider as a family, or as a member of the community, how we want so see our children grow up, we obviously want to see them grow up happy, safe, healthy and successful. If we take the time to look around, we will notice that many of the kids who grow up happy, safe, healthy and successful have caring adults, are active in extracurricular activities, recognize the importance of service, care about school and have positive values, and it seems like common sense that these attributes would lead to happiness and success. When I look back upon my childhood, I am thankful for my family, church family, community and all of the other adult role models which influenced and impacted who I am today. I am fortunate that I had the opportunity to learn to serve others, participate in the arts, and share in extracurricular activities. I am thankful for the values and character developed by these experiences. The Search Institute, a national youth research group has a model to help us as individuals and Huntsville as a community get past merely observing this common sense notion, but rather to understand what it takes for a community to be a great place for children and youth and allow us to be able to take action toward this goal. The Search Institute has identified forty “Developmental Assets”, that when present in the lives of children and youth make them more likely to engage in positive behaviors and grow up happy, healthy, safe and successful. Likewise, the fewer assets children and youth posses, the more likely they are to take part in negative behaviors such as violent behavior, substance abuse and teen pregnancy. The quantifiable data demonstrating these trends is amazing. The assets are divided into External and Internal Assets. The twenty External Assets are assets that are influenced by the world around them. Examples of these include positive family support, other adult relationships, participation in creative activities and high expectations. Internal assets relate to positive inner-growth. Examples include school engagement, honesty, cultural competence and responsibility. More information on the assets can be found on the Search Institute at www.search-institute.org, or the Huntsville Community Network website at www.huntsvilletexas.info. You might be wondering why this is important to you. Maybe you are a community member who does not have children, or who no longer has children at home. The goal of Huntsville’s Promise is to foster a community in which everyone understands the developmental assets and takes action to make Huntsville a healthy, happy community for our children and youth; a community where our children can grow up safe and successful, and a community that can be an example for other towns in terms of how we treat our young people. You do not have to be a parent or an educator to have an impact on a child’s life. Many non-profit organizations around town need help to improve or expand services to our young people, or you can make an impact just by talking with the kids in your neighborhood. People do not have to spend hours a week to make a difference-just a few minutes showing you care can change the world for that one young person. In order to spread awareness of the assets, Huntsville’s Promise and the Parents and Educators Committee, with the help of the Huntsville Item will introduce and highlight one Asset each week, beginning next week. We want this to be a communitywide effort, so if you have a business, a newsletter, or anywhere else we can display the Asset of the Week, please give us a call or email us at the Huntsville’s Promise office and we will be happy to help you spread awareness. We hope that the community will spend time each week thinking about how we as community members, parents, business people or organizations can help develop these assets for our children and youth. Also, because we don’t pretend to have all of the answers, we will post the Assets for the upcoming month in advance, and if you have any ideas on how to develop the asset, please let us know and we will tie it in when that asset runs. Maybe you or a group you are involved with has successfully developed this asset. If so, let us know how and if it worked. Also, if your groups have any upcoming activities scheduled to develop a particular asset, please let us know that as well and we will be sure it is included. For this to be successful, we need your help. Huntsville’s Promise will come speak with your group about the assets and help brainstorm ideas for you to develop the assets. Hopefully, this initiative will give everyone an opportunity to think about how they can work to improve the lives of Huntsville children and youth. |
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