Officials with Afterschool Partnership and national project partner, Youthline America, today unveiled Youth Mapping Iniative, a city block-by-block effort by trained youth to identify and collect information on neighborhood businesses, organizations and services that exist to serve youth and families.
Mapping New Orleans begins by teaching high school students and adult supervisors techniques for canvassing community districts to amass important information on youth resources. All New Orleans data will be compiled and published into the website neworleans.ilivehere.info, where information will feed into the national website www.ilivehere.info. The websites will provide youth and adults easy access to information specific to their zip codes.
Gina Warner, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Afterschool Partnership, Mapping New Orleans project sponsor, said mapping activities started this spring in Central City and the St. Roch community and that already some 180 locations serving youth and families have been identified.
Warner pointed out the dual benefits of the project:
“First, this project teaches young people a specific skill-set for building and managing a database of youth and family resources in their communities. Second, their work product itself becomes an incredibly valuable resource for informing the larger community about what important services are available or lacking in certain city neighborhoods.”
James Logan, project director of Youthline America, said the project meets young people’s desires to adapt technology to education:
“Mapping is a great opportunity to connect the curiosity of young people with the potential of technology. In addition, the mapping experience provides them with training in a number of transferable work skills, including interviewing, public speaking and computer technologies.”
Criminal justice officials have hailed the Mapping project for its strong potential in helping decrease neighborhood crime. “Programs like this encourage youth to make safe choices rather than letting them fall into a cycle of violence, drug use and other unhealthy behaviors,” commented James Letten, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Warner said the project will be completed by the end of 2010 but that trained students will update that dynamic content in the database regularly in the future. The Kellogg Foundation provided major funding for Mapping New Orleans to the Greater New Orleans Afterschool Partnership.
