May 2003

Hello, and welcome to the May issue of the National Civic League's email newsletter. This monthly communication will provide information on the activities and accomplishments of NCL and links to information on a variety of topics relating to NCL's mission.

The National Civic League is a 109-year-old non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to strengthening citizen democracy by transforming democratic institutions. NCL accomplishes its mission through technical assistance, training, publishing, research, and the All-America City Award. The National Civic League is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has an office in Washington, D.C. For more information, call 303-571-4343 or visit www.ncl.org.

This newsletter is by subscription only! You are receiving this newsletter because you requested a subscription on our website or because you are an NCL member. If you would like to unsubscribe, look for instructions at the end of this newsletter.

1. 2003 All-America City Awards
2. Federal Community Partnerships Cross-Site Meeting
3. Inclusion Conference
4. All-America City Internship Opening
5. Student Voices Job Posting
6. Federal-Community Partnerships Job Posting
7. Civic Index Feature: Capacity Building
8. Contact Information

Throughout this past year, our country has faced difficult challenges, such as the war in Iraq, economic struggles and our country's constant state of alert. However, many communities across the nation are coming together and facing challenges head on. Public, private and non-profit sectors are collaboratively addressing issues and producing tangible results.

Is your community is facing difficult challenges? Need some suggestions on how to effectively improve your community? Or is your community thinking about applying for the 2004 All-America City Award?

Join the National Civic League at the 54th Annual All-America City Awards in Washington, D.C. to find out more about the Awards as well as what other communities are doing to address critical issues. On June 12-14, 30 communities from around the nation will meet in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate their successes in the All-America City competition, the country's premiere civic recognition program.

What better way to improve your community than attending the All-America City Awards? At the event, you will:
* Learn from communities facing similar challenges
* Share ideas, experiences and successful approaches to community renewal
* Gain inspiration from each other's work
* Make important connections with community problem solvers

As an All-America City attendee, you will have access to workshops, exhibits, entertainment, and two days of community presentations at a joyous celebration of civic involvement in America's communities. Celebrate the spirit of community at a Welcome to Washington Reception, the Civic Action Fair and Cultural Entertainment Showcase, and the Awards Ceremony.

For a detailed agenda, please visit 2003 AAC Agenda.

To register for the 54th Annual All-America City Awards, please visit 2003 AAC Registration.

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NCL's Federal-Community Partnerships program provides training and technical assistance for eleven communities selected to implement the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) Safe Start Demonstration Project. The Safe Start Initiative provides five
years of funding for urban, rural, and tribal communities to address problems faced by young children exposed to violence within homes,
schools and communities. The initiative will offer these communities an opportunity to implement effective prevention and intervention
strategies by strengthening already existing alliances and integrating service delivery systems (such as police/mental health/justice partnerships.

The NCL team conducted the Spring 2003 Cross-Site Meeting held May 14-16 in Pinellas County, Florida at St. Pete Beach. The theme for the meeting
was "Embedding a Process Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow," and addressed the following topics: collaboration in the implementation
stage, and how it leads to sustainability; generating community awareness, creating community champions, and engaging the courts in our
collaborative processes; sharing data and information and overcoming privacy barriers; evaluating program strategies and identifying children
exposed to violence; and strengthening systems change efforts, both within agencies and across systems. The meeting was designed to focus
the 11 sites on the variety of methods to ensure sustainability and provide them with tools for applying systems change strategies.
Presentations by the Institute for Community Peace, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Institute for Educational
Leadership and others contributed to the knowledge and information sharing, and allowed the 11 sites to share success and challenges with
each other. The meeting concluded with a look ahead at the upcoming years of the project and outlined next steps and milestones for
progressing towards sustainability.

The Fall 2003 Cross-Site meeting will be held in Sitka, Alaska.

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On May 8, 2003, the National Civic League hosted a conference titled Inclusiveness and the Democracy: A Focus on Electoral Reform at the AARP headquarter building in Washington, D.C. Participants, representing both civil rights and political reform organizations, attended the day-long conference to locate points of intersection between these historically distinct and separate movements, and increase cross-movement understanding and mutual cooperation. [Read More]

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The All-America City program currently has an opening for an intern to provide summary writing and research for an NCL web page summarizing Youth Initiative Challenge programs. See the full job description for more information.

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NCL is currently soliciting applications for a project manager to join the Student Voices project in Denver, Colorado. The Student Voices Project is sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The project works with local school systems throughout the country to help high school students learn about their local government and become more civically engaged. In 2001, the National Civic League was selected by the Annenberg Public Policy Center to organize the Student Voices Project in Denver in association with the Denver Public School System. We have been asked to continue the program for another year, and are looking for a Project Manager to run the program. See the full job description for more information.

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NCL's Federal-Community Partnerships project has an immediate opening for a Project Director to oversee provision of training and technical assistance
to the Safe Kids/Safe Streets and Safe Start federal demonstration initiatives to prevent juvenile deliquency. For more information including a
description of the project director's duties and the qualifications required for the position, please see the full job description.

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Capacity Building: An Ongoing Process

Undergoing the Civic Index community self-evaluation process does not mean that the community will immediately, or in fact ever, become problem free. The purpose of the process is not perfection, but to identify local challenges and then establish community structures to offer better, more complete solutions to these problems.

Read more of this article by NCL's Derek Okubo...

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