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1. Important Community Issues

2. Identify People’s Needs

3. Realign for the Future

Realign for the Future

What could be more critical to the future viability of an organization that planning for it?  Demand for resources, time, money, physical space, taxes, etc. will heighten over the next decade.  Park and recreation organizations need to get ready NOW.

One way to do so is select the strategic initiative or initiatives that will best meet the needs of its stakeholders.  Explore 3 of the more viable options for our future.

• Strategic Initiative #1:  Health

• Strategic Initiative #2:  Community and Social Contact and Connections

• Strategic Initiative #3:  Youth Development

Supporting Materials and Packages for Purchase

(sorry, but these pricing packets are restricted to public and nonprofits only -- consultants and commercial firms, please contact Ellen directly)

	The BIG 3:  Issues, Needs, and Realignment Do It Yourself Strategic Plan An outline of the elements to be included with a strategic plan for public parks and recreation as well as directions and suggested approaches for an organization to conduct on its own.	$125
	*Existing Elements for a Strategic Plan Save by Buying ALL 3 as Package:  (with trends developed specifically for your issues and residents’ needs: a savings of $350)	$1,550
	The BIG 3 Issues You provide Leisure Lifestyle with the names and email addresses of up to 30 community leaders and stakeholders and after your director has sent them each a personal letter, LLC will follow up with a short survey.  A review of the demographics, news editorials of the past year, and online minutes of pertinent community meetings will be incorporated to determine the most important 3 issues in your community.	$700
	People’s Needs Who currently resides within your community?  How do the specific demographic factors, age, income, ethnicity make a difference in your plan for the future?  How will these changing demographics result in needs that are important and of interest to the people living in your community?  A must for all organizations seeking insight into their customers	$750
	Trends:  Patterns and Projections Whether you are a department looking for a comprehensive trend section to add to your department’s plan or just in need of a trends update to your existing plans, this is the trend package for you.  You supply us with the zip code information for your community and identify what you perceive as being the most important 3 issues coming your way, i.e. youth development, aging population, need for open space, etc. and we’ll create a concise and referenced trend insert for your planning purposes.	$450

Strategic Initiative #1:  Health _______________________________________________________

An additional study focused on the state-level estimates of total obesity-attributable medical expenditures, including Medicare and Medicaid costs.  California’s obesity-attributable costs were approximately $7.7 billion, the largest state-level expenditure in the United States (Source: Obesity Research; Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, and Wang, 2004).

Supportive Information:  Health

The success of resolutions and new initiatives, strategic or tactical, require information to serve as a basis for selecting those directions and designing the changes approaches. 

The annual report sponsored by the United Health Foundation assigns weights to various factors such as health insurance coverage, heart disease rates, infant mortality rates, the rate of motor vehicle deaths, high school graduation rates, childhood poverty, and public health spending.
 

What states are at the top and bottom?

Minnesota is the healthiest U.S. state once again.  It has finished first nine out of the 15 times this measurement has been completed and never ranked lower than 2^nd which it did last year by tying with New Hampshire.  Louisiana is the least healthy, a ranking it has held for 14 of the last 15 years of a national survey.  This year New Hampshire was second followed by Vermont and those ranking at the bottom jus ahead of Louisiana were Tennessee and Mississippi.

National Health Progress

The overall health of the United States demonstrated improvement during the 1990s likely due to expenditures in  public health, public education, and decreases in smoking, cardiovascular deaths and violent crime. Little improvement has been noted across the country since 2000 and this is primarily due to big increases in obesity.

 

About the Report

America’s Health Rankings™ combines individual measures of

• personal behaviors (decisions, habits, and practices that effect personal health

• community environment (conditions in which we live our lives)

• public and health policies (availability of resources and the extent of reach of public and health programs)

• clinical care reflects the quality, appropriateness and cost of the care we receive at doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals.   

It uses a methodology, developed and reviewed by a panel of leading public health experts that weights the contributions of various factors, such as smoking, motor vehicle deaths, high school graduation rates, children in poverty, access to care and incidence of preventable disease and the report is based on data from the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education and Labor, the National Safety Council and the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Source:  http://www.unitedhealthfoundation.org/ahr2006/index.html

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Strategic Initiative #2:  Community and Social Contact and Connections ______________________

There are actually two aspects of this issue:  overall community well-being and vitality and the well-being of individuals living within a community.

The overall community well-being that results in people being less involved in public activities and civic engagement is generally attributed to two income families and increased commuting time both which result in less time and energy for such pursuits.  “The Bowling Alone” Syndrome identified previously by Robert Putnam continues to thrive. 

The other aspect relates to individuals who are able to virtually live, work, learn, and play in an online or technologically driven environment resulting in less and less actual physical contact with other human beings.  Putnam has coined a new term, privatization of leisure” to highlight this phenomena.  The scientifically supported research about the role of human contact related to health and ability to thrive and grow is well documented.

Supportive Information:  Community and Social Connectedness

Increasing Isolation in How and Where We Live

Association-governed communities include homeowners associations, condominiums, cooperatives and other planned communities. Homeowners associations and other planned communities account for 52-55% of the totals above, condominiums for 38-42% and cooperatives for 5-7%. These are estimates based on U.S. Census publications, American Housing Survey (AHS), IRS Statistics of Income Reports, California and Florida state specific information, related association industry trade groups, and collaboration with industry professionals.

Source:  http://www.caionline.org/about/facts.cfm

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Online Social Networking:  The Pew Internet Project conducted a telephone survey from October 23 through November 19, 2006 among a national sample of 935 youths ages 12 to 17. The survey asked about the ways that teenagers use social networking sites and their reasons for doing so. Among the key findings:

• More than half (55%) of all of online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites

• 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.

• 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible to all internet users.

• 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often with 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.

• Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% of older boys have done so.

• Teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships as 91% of all social networking teens say they use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently, while 82% use the sites to stay in touch with friends they rarely see in person.

• 72% of all social networking teens use the sites to make plans with friends

• 49% use the sites to make new friends.

• Older boys who use social networking sites (ages 15-17) are more likely than girls of the same age to say that they use social networking sites to make new friends (60% vs. 46%).

 

One Out of Four with Nobody!  The safety net of social relationships and close friendships appears to be shrinking in the United States according to a recent study reported in the American Sociological Review. Other findings in this report included:

• Americans have one-third fewer close friends than they did 20 years ago. 

• The 3 close friends that Americans had in 1985 is now reduced to two close friends.

• What’s even more serious 25% of Americans reported having no close confidants while they only 10% reported having no close friends in 1985.

• Fewer contacts come from clubs and neighbors.

• More people now depend upon family to serve as close confidents with that percentage rising from 57% to 80%. 

Source:  Kornblum, Janet.  “Study:  25% of Americans Have No One to Confide In” USA Today, June 2006.

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Strategic Initiative #3:  Safe and Successful Youth _______________________________________

Every Child, Every Promise: Turning Failure Into Action funded what is considered the first study to measure the lack of five essential resources that correlate with a child's success in youth and adulthood.  The report is based upon the five “promises” that the organization believes contribute to greater likelihood that children will be successful.

This survey focused upon identifying young people and their experiences with the promises.  Survey results suggest that young people experiencing four of the five promises fared much better than those receiving zero or one "promise".  The areas measured in this survey were academic success, social competence, civic participation and use of violence.

Findings from the study revealed the following:

• Only 40 percent of 12 to 17 year-olds participate in high quality after-school activities.

• Almost 40 percent of teens do not have parents actively involved in their education.

• 40 percent of young people doubt they will be able to realize their dreams.

• 70 percent said they needed more help to realize their dreams.

• 34 million school-age children are pessimistic about their chances of success.

Source:  http://www.americaspromise.org/ECEP.aspx?id=208&ekmensel=10_submenu_130_btnlink

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Supportive Information:  Youth Growth and Connections

America’s Promise is a collaboration of all forms of enterprises, public, nonprofit, and commercial who have banded together with the common goal of ensuring the success of our nation’s children.  The premise of the organization is include:

• Caring Adults

• Safe Places

• A Healthy Start

• Effective Education

• Opportunities to Help Others

The web site provides information and insight as to how children are faring related to these “Five Promises” as follows.

Caring Adults

• Nearly two-thirds of African-American children, and almost one in four white children, live in households with only one parent.

• Two million American children have a parent in jail.

• More than 15 million at-risk young people need a mentor.

• Approximately eight million children ages 5 to 14 regularly spend time without adult supervision. 

Safe Places

• 740,000 children were victims of violent crimes in their schools in 2003.

• 845,000 children were victims of violent crimes out of school.

• Two-thirds of all sexual assaults on children under 12 years old go unreported.

• 1,600 children ages 17 and under were murdered in 2002. 

Healthy Start

• 34% of African-American children live in poverty.

• Roughly 30 million young people live in families with incomes below 200% of the poverty level.

• Babies born in the U.S. are less likely to survive until their first birthday than in 27 other industrialized nations.

• On an average day, at least one child goes hungry in up to 50,000 American households.

• In 2004, approximately one in five 10th graders reported using illegal drugs within the past 30 days.

• Approximately one in 11 high school students reported attempting suicide in 2003.

• Approximately 5,000 children committed suicide in 2001.

• Nearly 2.3 million children were arrested in 2002.

Effective Education

• Approximately 30% of U.S. students do not finish high school.

• 70% of our 8th graders score below proficiency levels in math.

• 69% of our 8th graders score below proficiency in English.

• U.S. 15-year-olds scored 28th in math and problem-solving skills among children from 41 industrialized nations who took the same test. 

Opportunities To Help Others

• Less than half of all young people who say they want to help others in their community have been asked to do so.

Impact of 5 Youth Transitions

As we recognize the growing impact of globalization and how people around the world impact the lives of one another, the World Bank released  World Development Report 2007:  Development and the Next Generation.  The report points out that there are currently 1.5 billion human beings between the ages of 12 and 24 that these young people will significantly shape the future of their countries and the world.  The report identified 5 youth transitions with the most significant and long-ranging impact for our future.

These five transitions include the following:

1. Learning After Primary School:  More than 85% of all children are in school at age 12 but that percentage declines after that time.

2. Starting a Productive Work Life:  This difficult transition leads to drawn out periods of inactivity for youth

3. Developing a Healthy Lifestyle:  The search for identify and a place in one’s world often places long term health at risk.

4. Forming a Family:   The ability of young families to form stable, ongoing relationships and invest in the well-being of their own children.

5. Exercising Citizenship:  Opportunities to interact more extensively with the larger community leading to civic engagement.

The report goes on to suggest the following strategic directions related to these transitions:

• broadening opportunities for development of human capital;

• developing capacity of youth to choose well among various opportunities

• providing an effective system for second chances giving young people a way and incentive to get back on track.

Editor’s Note:  Interesting that these three strategies so closely resemble the desired outcomes associated with the youth development options in parks and recreation.

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