OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
NEWS RELEASE
City of Seattle
Mike McGinn, Mayor
For Immediate Release: February 22, 2010
Contact: Aaron Pickus, (206) 233-2650
Youth and Families Initiative
First Large Group Meeting is Tonight
Dear fellow Seattleites,
Mayor Mike McGinn invites you to participate in the Youth and Families Initiative, a major initiative announced during his inaugural address. The first of five large group meetings is tonight at the Rainier Community Center from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Versions of this invitation have been translated into Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrigna, Chinese, Oromo, Russian, Thai, Amharic, Cambodian, Somali, Korean and Vietnamese (attached).
The children and families of our city are facing many difficult challenges. As a community, we need to talk about what we want for our kids and how best to create a healthy, positive and equitable environment for all families in our city.
Toward this goal, Seattle’s Department of Information Technology has created an online embeddable form for collecting community input for the Youth and Families Initiative (attached). The form, designed to be embedded in blogs and web sites, extends the online outreach outside of the Mayor’s Office.
Let’s start a discussion together and come up with a plan that works.
Please join us in attending one of five workshops, where trained facilitators will lead participants through the beginnings of this group discussion.
February 22 – Rainier Community Center 7:00-8:30 p.m.
March 1 – Northgate Elementary School 7:00-8:30 p.m.
March 8 – Van Asselt Elementary School 7:00-8:30 p.m.
March 15 – Denny Middle School 7:00-8:30 p.m.
March 22 – Garfield Community Center 7:00-8:30 p.m.
The Mayor’s Office has created a visual representation of the outreach process and timeline for the Youth and Families Initiative (attached).
Activities for kids older than three years of age and light refreshments will be provided at each meeting. If English is not your primary language and you would like translation or interpretation, please notify the Department of Neighborhoods at 684-0464 so we can work to provide the best resources available.
“Our goal with the Youth and Families Initiative is to get input from everyone in Seattle who cares about these issues,” said Mayor’s Office Community Engagement Coordinator Sol Villarreal. “We realize that not everyone is going to be interested in attending or able to attend one of the large group workshops, so in order to make sure we’re hearing from a representative sample of the population of the city, we’re also going to be holding up to 100 Community Caucuses around the city. The idea is that instead of asking someone to come to us, we’re going to go to them to make sure that their voice gets heard.”
Each Community Caucus will elect one delegate to send on to the Kids and Families Congress on June 5 at Seattle Center.
It is only together that we can solve the deep, complex problem of how to create an equitable community for our great city’s youth and families. There is no one solution, no one program or person who can point our neighborhoods in the right direction.
We ask that you join us at the beginning of this discussion so that we may all work together toward the common goal of a stronger community.
Please visit http://www.seattle.gov/engage to get involved in the Youth and Families Initiative.
Web site: http://youthandfamilies.
Facebook: Youth and Families Initiative
Twitter: MayorMcGinn
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