Transcripts For WRC Viewpoint 20150308

Talents. A lot of times the difference between success and not quite making it are empowering them to use those talents and opportunities. Youve got a great new campaign youre launching, see me for me. Ill talk about that in the rest of the half hour. Talk about numbers. How many children are we talking about that d. C. Trust serves . Over the course of the year we impact over 30,000 young people through our programs through the programs we support during the school year and the summer as well. They run the gamut, everything from literacy programs and mentoring programs to after School Sports programs to making sure young people are involved in the arts and entertainment as well. By all with the focus of helping them on a pathway to success. So not just participating for the sake of participating, but how do we use that to build the skills and confidence necessary to succeed in school to be good citizens go on to college and get sustainable jobs. Rebecca, what age groups . The trust serves young people between the ages of 5 and 24. Were doing support with families. We recognize some people in that age range are themselves parents. We look at more increasingly early childhood, 0 to 5 range. The sweet spot is the 35 to 24 rage. When we talk about numbers, directly or indirectly through the city its a large number. Yes. We coordinate a lot of work that City Government agencies do so department of parks and recreation employment services, public libraries, d. C. Schools are all partnerships. When ed says more than 30,000 thats the landscape. Its the direct provision we do and then the citywide impact with the agency i just mentioned. A lot of people are aware of the history a few years back involving embezzlement. The new name. D. C. Investment and Youth Investment trust corporation. How big of a challenge was it and how was it necessary to rename yourself and start fresh in some respects. It was very important to us. The central part of our name the d. C. Trust, signifies the trust we want everyone to have in the organization both the young people we serve and the public at large. That trust was broken. We had to distance ourselves from that and rebrand in order to reinstill and reinvigorate those who support the organization. For us its more than just changing the name. We shortened the name but not our impact. What we really focused ond is letting the impact were having in the lives of young people speak for itself. Thats where the rebranding comes from for us. Its not just changing the name and getting a new logo. Its doubling down on the efforts to make sure young people have avenues for success. Our partners making sure were working in a very strategic way to help those young eem. What does it mean for parents to have these programs in place for their children . For parents, it means a lot. On the very basic level, its the knowledge and recognition their young people are engaged in activities that are going to support them supplement what theyre learning in school expose them to new avenues of discovery, that are going to ensure over the summer especially that theyre not sliding back in what they learned over the school year. At the very basic, its knowing that theyre gain new competencies and become new selves. Another way it impacts parents is the fact that through this Young Development work that we do a lot of violence is prevented. Theres a lot of talk about the Youth Violence in the city and a lot of fear parents have that the young people will be engaged in those things. The work we do to make sure young people are engaged successfully with caring adults means they arent doing the other things. Idle hands are the devils workshop. So we help build the positive workshop. We have a lot more to get to. As we go to break, well put up the web address. If youd like to learn more about the d. C. Trust, you can check out the websites on your screen. Welcome back to viewpoint. Were focusing this sunday morning on d. C. Trust. You guys have a huge budget roughly 40 million. Yes. Most of that money is money we grant out to Community Based organizations and provide scholarships to young people to attend private schools here in the city. So it sounds like a lot of money, but after you start handing out grants and scholarship, it goes pretty quickly. Were certainly always looking to raise more money to support even more families and kids. Thats a new initiative. Tell me a little about whetherre the money comes from . Is this federal or local . Its a split between the two. We receive an appropriation from the d. C. Government each year and we have contracts and partnerships with other Government Agencies to help manage some of their work. A large portion, roughly 20 million, comes from the department of education for the Education Scholarship program that we operate. Thats exciting. You talk about applying for grantsz. But all the various organization how do they go about getting in and applying for grants for money, too . There are several waytion they that. We have a grants management partner that will put out rfps, requests for proposals. We have the d. C. Youth link initiative. We also do our own funding, traditional outofschooltime programs. For that specific piece, i think most people are familiar with the trust. The organizations will respond to the request for proposals. We have a team of external reviewers that review those proposals, a very rigorous process that all those organizations have to go through. Theres mandates about cpr training and fbi testing and Youth Development training to make sure all those youth all those adult whose touch those youth have the capacities and the competencies needed to be sure were supporting them well. We also have an initiative that we began about two years ago to build the capacity of nascent organizations or individuals working in our most marginalized communities. Through our center for excellence and yukt development, were helping to build the competencies of those small organizations so they can compete the same as the larger organizations. Were proud of the Capacity Building support were able to use. Ive seen your money put to good youth at two big tennis facility. I just took a big tour of the washington tennis facility and also core masters tennis center. They are serving children not just on the tennis court but in the classroom, not just in the afternoon but at schools, too. Its making such a critical difference in young lives. I asked you about parents because the parents dont know what theyd do without these two programs. Youre absolutely right. One of the things we stress is when this work around after School Program started many years ago, it was just to provide a safe space for kids to go while their parents worked so they could have fun, get their homework done but the needs are so great for our young people in the city. We have those suffering through prove verity through homelessness theyre suffering through trauma and violence in their communities. So many Different Things that are there to basically hold them back from being able to be successful. What we want to go out and do is make sure that young people have opportunities to be like you, to be like me to be like rebecca, that theyre put on a path to success. The programs we provide are about helping young people develop their skills and talents, motivate them to be successful. A lot of the work we do is supporting parents, also. Its not a handsoff, give us your kids and well work with them its how do we help parents through their challenges as well and help them get their children on the path we want to get them on. Its a longterm commitment then if youre starting 5 years old perhaps on through college. Absolutely. We take a really comprehensive look at Youth Development. Our whom organization is founded in the Youth Development principles. Those principles talk about things Like Mental Health spirituality and ability to connect. All the organizations that we support support young people in all of those different areas of ability across the trajectory of age. Thats great. At this tennis tour i took at the wtef they were giving college tours. I asked how young. They said we start them like 10 12 years old, getting them on a path to think long term. Oftentimes theyre coming from a home where they would be the first person to go to college. I grew up in a home with a single mother in southeast d. C. Being africanamerican single mother head of household in southeast d. C. There are numbers that would tell you i shouldnt be sitting here today and plenty of examples of that. Thats why this work thats why im personally and not just professionally committed to this work. I want to create opportunities for young people to have the same opportunities i have in order to go on and be successful and be able to not see those circumstances as a limitation not even to see them as barriers but something that is a part of their life working on behalf of other young people. Just because your zip code may be in southeast or may be in northeast or some of our other underresourced communities, we have to prop up more examples of you can be suck selves there are pathways to that and organizations like the trust and the work that we do with other partners across the city to make sure those stunts areopportunities are available to them. Youve walked the walk. Well be right back. Well put up on the screen the web addresses. If youd like to get involved yourself or donate your time. Welcome back to viewpoint. Again, were focusing on d. C. Trust and all the good work they do in our community. 150 organizations youve worked with. Youve launched a couple of new campaigns, one this week called cme4me. Right. All this work were talking about for young people if we dont change the way adults view young people and the way young people view themselves, we wont get to the outcomes for me. The purpose of cme4me. We want adults to see young people as people with talents, assets people worthy of all the opportunities we have in life. We also want young people to feel that for themselves that they should feel worthy have a high sense of selfworth and selfesteem to say i want to pursue these opportunities because it could mean something valuable for my life. So cme4me we want adults to look past what they visually see, to look past not what the person is wearing where they live what their Bank Accounts are, but who they are at their core. And all the potential thats there. Exactly. When you look through all those things and see the essence of that person youre more likely to give them an opportunity, to change your perspective and see the positives and not the potential negatives that a shell may present. This campaign is running all over the city on our buses, trolleys bus shelters. Its a way of creating awareness and helping to change perspectives by the visual images of young people in a positive life but having a sense of hope and positivity about them. One of the positive lights youre shining is on volunteerism. Yes. I think one of the outcomes of the cme4me campaign is for adults to want to own the young people to say they have value, i see myself in that young person and i want to help that young person get to be who they are, not necessarily who i want them to be but who they want to be. In terms of working with the young people i think youth are sometimes their hardest critictioncritics, they sometimes blame themselves for the issues and barriers they face. A piece of this campaign is to help shift that too, so they can say im a whole person, im beautiful, talented creative. Help me help you. You build the selfesteem and the confidence. Volunteerism you mentioned that during the break, too. Thats a big part of also communities on the rise. The communities on the Rise Initiative is something were really really proud of. It came out of the work weve been doing over the last three years with coordination in the city. We recognize summer after summer year after year the same neighborhoods keep rising up as neighborhoods are targeted. Theres crime initiatives targeted in these neighborhoods. We said you know what, lets look at the neighborhoods, we know the problems that exist, the deficits that exist. Lets build the capacity and strengthen and work from the assets of those communities to help sustain efforts. What happens oftentimes is an Initiative Comes in and resources are thrown into a neighborhood and after those resources are gone and after the initiative is over those resources leave and the community is left in the same place that it was originally. So our approach really raises up three things, youth leadership. We recognize young people need to be at the forefront of the change that we seek. So we cant do any work for young people without young people. So young people if we build their skills as leaders, if we build their sense of ownership and love for themselves and their communities, theyll be able to change and see wonderful things for their communities. On the outside while we work to do things on the outside, shifting and helping to coordinate government. We dont come in and say this organization is doing great work we want to do this and that. We listen to what the Community Says. The Community Says this organization has fwn working here we have a trusted relationship with them. We like the way they work they work really well with us thats our anchor. So the anchor really anchors that community and raises it up and says you know what im going to help bring thing together and strengthen this neighborhood. The other piece is we work with the 150 organizations that we work with we identified the nascent organizations and people in the neighborhoods that are doing great work the candy lady the grand mom, the folks who have been doing programs out of their own pockets, the goodness of their hearts we bring them together so theyre supporting even other versus competing against each other. Were really building a spirit of partnership and a spirit of community. Thats the communities on the rise. That makes perfect sense because in our day you mentioned about growing up and all the obstacles that people growing up. It used to be one person can make a difference or one organization. Youre really talking about maybe several organizations helping a family. Yes. Absolutely. That speaks to another theme that we use. This theme resonates in the boys and girls of color. The theme is together we thrive. It takes all of us working together to support everyone in a community, even if were targeting a specific population like young men of color, whether theyre black males or latino males or immigrant population its still a collective effort. When we help those that are most marginalized be successful we help everyone be successful. That comes from all of us working together towards those ends. Its everybodys responsibility. Well be right back to get to more. Well come back. Were talking with the folks from d. C. Trust. We talked at the beginning of the program about some history that you had to overcome and relabel, rebrand yourself and start with a clean slate. Reforms in place so Something Like that doesnt happen again that we touched on at the beginning. We put a lot of reforms in place in terms of how we manage our grant making. We do what we call 100 source documentation. Soef redollar that goes out the door has to be tracked and accounted for by our grantees receiving the funds so everything is accounted for. Weve streamlined the process so it cant be manipulated either by the trust, the city council or the mayors office. Its our community deciding where we want the funds to go. This has been demonstrated since ive taken over as executive director weve had clean audits for the time since all these issues happened in the past which is a way of showing that, you know all the grant making and all the processes that we put in place have been working. Thousands of children that youre touching and their lives are really altered forever. Yes. But the impact stories you hear and see, they make all the difference. Yes. We actually had an event this past friday that epitomizes the impact of this work. We work with a group of young adult leaders. Two of them work in communities, clay tears are and Lincoln Heights over in ward 7. Those are neighborhoods that have been warring for about 30 years. No one really knows why. The kids dont know why. But theyre inheriting this antagonism. Our young adult leaders helped those young people plan an event that brought those two neighborhoods together. The young people took ownership of the whole thing. They planned this talent show t food everything to the last detail which helped build their skills in that, but also helped to build that sense of community. Now those kids say we want to do a service project, we want to build a Neighborhood Garden we want we want we want. The parents of those young people who sometimes are a little harder to engage were like how can we be involved . Now we have parent volunteers from the neighborhood. If someone wants to help or distribute they should go to the website, a www. Dctrustforyouth. Donate there. Thank you both. And thank you for all you do and all the exciting things coming down the pike. It was fascinating to learn about this morning. Thank you for slg us. We want to thank you for coming in too. We want to tell you that news 4 today starts right after this. Stay with us. Kimmed in the line of duty. What we are learning about the Prince George Police Officer and who he had inside his car during that time of that deadly crash. Good morning and welcome to news 4 today everyone. Im angie goff. Im adam tuss. Today is sunday march 8th. Did you set your clock to the right time . Yeah, i hit the Snooze Button also. People might be concerned about the time right now. It is 6 00 not 5 00. I only lost 45 minutes. Chuck didnt lose any time. Hes here right . We think hes here right . What . Huh . Wake up. Its one of those kind of weekends. You guys may or may not have