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School Board Meeting Celebrates PRIMEtime Collaboration

On Monday October the 13th, the Primetime Grant Collaborative and its Primetime Fellows were celebrated for their wonderful contribution to the Northfield community. The PRIMEtime Fellows are high school students that assist with elementary and middle school at after school and summer programming. The Fellows were a recent winner for the Red Wagon Award in Minnesota, which is co-sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance with Youth and Lieutenant Governor Carol Molnauand and recognizes young people who have demonstrated the following:

* Increased academic achievement
* Civic engagement & service
* Exemplary leadership

The Northfield Skateboard Coalition was a recipient of the award in 2007.

The School Board Meeting also included a presentation by the Primetime Collaborative Team in which they went over successes and numbers for the 2007-2008 school year and summer programming. PRIMEtime stands for Promoting Responsible Individuals through Mentoring and Enrichment and is a collaborative effort to assure out-of-school-time programming for Northfield youth in grades 4-12 and is funded by the Minnesota Department of Education. Over 1000 youth participated in the Primetime programming during the 2007-2008 grant year and included: PLUS – an after school program that meets four days per week at Bridgewater Elementary School & Greenvale Park Elementary School; the Middle School Youth Center – open daily after school in the Northfield Middle School; The Key; and Summer PLUS – a summer-long academic and recreational program for elementary and middle school students. Community partners include Connected Kids Mentoring, Aztec Dancers, Comadres, Reaching Our Goals (ROG), Woman’s Circle, TORCH, and many others. Northfield Healthy Community Initiative did an excellent job as the hosting agent and helped coordinate and implement many aspects of the grant.

Thanks to Marnie Thompson, Pat Parlin, and Roger Jeni giving the presentation as well as the youth who also spoke at the meeting.

Check out Griff’s Wigley’s post on Locally Grown; it has much better photos than this post.

Anyone interested in the powerpoint presentation (minus the pictures, sorry) can download it here:
primetime-powerpoint-minus-pictures

Nuts to Bikes….We want Unicycle Club

The newest program to the Key is Unicycle Club. UC meets every Monday at 7:00pm at The Key. The program coordinator is the one and only Zane Anway. A big thanks to MIKE’s BIKES for donating a unicycle for the club. Anyone with questions can email northfieldunionofyouth@gmail.com. No experience is necessary. Come to improve your technique or learn a new skill. This program, like ALL Key programs, is free and open to anyone age 12-20.

New Youth Micro Grant Program Up and Running

This fall Main Street Mentors is proud to kick off the Northfield Youth Micro-Grant Program. This program will provide funding to Northfield students under the age of 19 who would like to start their own businesses. The intention of the Youth Micro-Grant is to help young people learn valuable skills, interact with community mentors, and potentially form a profitable business.

Northfield Healthy Community Initiative dedicated $5,500 to form this youth micro-grant program. No more than $1,000 will be granted to any one student/application. The first deadline for applications is November 1. If available funding remains or additional funding is secured, there will be a secondary deadline on January 15, as well as April 15. After each deadline a board made up of three adults and three youth will review the applications and distribute funding based on the merit of the project.

Interested students will be asked to fill out an initial application, which requires little more than a basic business idea. After the initial application is received the student will be matched up with a mentor based on his or her project. After meeting with a mentor the student will complete a more detailed secondary application to be reviewed. If the student receives funding he or she will be invited to attend informative seminars that highlight important business skills or other relevant information.

The review board will look highly on projects that will contribute something valuable to the Northfield Community and utilizes the great people in this town.

Applications are available on this (The Key’s) website at unionofyouth.com (click on the microgrant heading). Any questions about this program can be directed to Josh Hinnenkamp at mainstreetmentors@gmail.com or Wade Hauser at hauser@stolaf.edu. We are more than happy to answer questions and help get programs off the ground.

Applications can be handed in via email above or dropped off at The Key.

Big Brother is Watching Book Club

Prophetic or paranoia? Communism or capitalism? Is Big Brother watching us? Come pick up a copy of George Orwell’s classic “futuristic” novel 1984. Book Club meets EVERY monday at 5:00pm. Please read the first six chapters by Monday the 15th of September and be ready to discuss. Call the Key @ 507.663.0715 with any questions. This promises to be a doubleplusgood time. Snacks will be provided.

Youth Board Retreat Photos

The Youth Board held their annual summer board retreat July 28th. The group camped out at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park overnight, grilling up burgers, veggie burgers, and dogs. Members also went exploring in the trails chilled out by the waterfall. The group also had an extended meeting talking about programming, the future of the Key and other related topics.

Art Project – DRAGON

From now until early September, the Key will be working on making a Chinese Dragon for art project. We need LOTS of help, so much in fact that we’re having art project TWO days a week. Tuesdays will stay the same (at 6:30), but we’re also meeting with Stephen Delwiche (of Grezzo Gallery fame) on Sundays at 4:00.

It'll be like this, but cooler

Keep in mind, as the dragon gets bigger, we may need to find other locations for creating this monster. We’ll keep you updated as to where we’re meeting.

WINGS grants Key $1,000 for Photography Club

The Northfield Union of Youth and its Photo Club received a $1,000 grant award from Women in the Community Giving Support (WINGS) at WINGS’ annual grant awards luncheon. The luncheon on Saturday, June 28 at the King’s Room at St. Olaf College saw 21 different grants awarded amounting in $42,500 for local organizations. Since its founding in 2000, WINGS has given more than $283,200 in grants in the Northfield area. Photography Club meets at The Key every Tuesday at 5:00pm. Thanks WINGS!!! Representatives from most of the grantees are pictured, with Kellen Kirchberg representing The Key.

Book Club Reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A boy and his father roam the Southeast United States after an unnamed catastrophe renders most life useless and dead. The surviving humans live as scavengers and/or cannibals just to stay alive. This is the basic premise of the new Cormac McCarthy book that has been selected by Book Club. Although bleak in tone and coarse in writing, this book brings up many important issues and questions that human kind has been struggling with for hundreds of years. Is this the book of the year? Well, it did win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But most importantly, this seems to be the book that gets kids who don’t read, to (re)start reading. It is that powerful and highly recommended. Read to page 175 for Monday June 23rd.

Funding for the Minnesota After-School Community Learning program is provided by the Minnesota Department of Education and further funding by the Office of Justice Youth Intervention Program.

Writing Mentor/Instructor Needed

Well established teen creative writing program seeks mentor/instructor comfortable with spontaneous, youth-generated, adult-guided format. Responsibilities include recruiting writers, teaching one class per week, planning end-of-year public reading. Must be willing to provide writing samples. The position is from September 2008 until June 2009, pays $25 an hour, and has a 2 to 4 hr. weekly commitment.

Please send resume with two writing samples (due August 1st) to:
Northfield Union of Youth
Attn: Writing Workshop
P.O. Box 481
Northfield, MN 55057

or email to: joshhinnenkamp@yahoo.com
If you have any questions please email the above address.

Book Club Viddies at a Real Horrorshow Book

Book Club has gone bezoomy my droogies and is reading the raskazz of Alex, a nadmenny malchick of 15, living in a nightmarish and merzky England of the future. He and his droogs roam the streets at nochy performing acts of ultraviolence and the old in-out. They have bitvas with other shaikas, tolchock (and much worse) young devotchkas, then retire to milkbars to peet moloko with drencrom and vellocet and sloosky to classical music. Eventually Alex is loveted by the millicents (after he oobivats a soomka), becomes a prestoopnik at Staja, and undergoes Ludovico’s Technique, a form of brainwashing that makes him bolnoy when he considers ultraviolence and pol. The book is A Clockwork Orange and the author is Anthony Burgess. We offer no appypolly loggy but this book is very controversial and caution (and shilarny) is strongly advised. This book has been known to cause pain in the gulliver and some may feel a malenky razdrez in the guttiwuts (thus participants must assure me that their em or pee know they are reading this book). No deng or cutter needed as Book Club is always free. So itty on down to the Klootch (Key) and use your rasoodock to govoreet like this.