Agenda - 08-20-1997 - 8c - Laserfiche WebLink

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ti 7 In addition to the creation of a vision for the county, this Youth Visioning Effort also addresses the broader goals of the Shaping Orange County's Future process -- promoting citizen participation, building community, and forming active citizens. o Citizenyarticipation: Determining where the citizens of Orange County want to "go" as a community and how to get there can only be done through the compilation of the many voices of all the stakeholders. The Youth Visioning Project will enable the youth of Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough to participate in Shaping Orange County's Future. .� Community building: Through considering the county as a whole, Shaping Orange County's Future hopes to unite the rural and urban perspectives within the county. Students will be enriched by the diversity of experiences and opinions as they work with others with different backgrounds from throughout the county, and begin to construct the bridge across Northern and Southern Orange. o Citizen building: Educating youth on the function of local government and the role of citizen participation in that process while giving them an opportunity to directly experience involvement in civic affairs will build future active citizens that will uphold the American democratic ideal in the years to come. Our success in meeting these goals will be measured in participation and document collection. We will maintain participation rosters, monitor geographic representation, and utilize student evaluation surveys. In addition, we will recognize how much of what they learned in class exercises shines through in the charette. We hope to reach a total of approximately 300 students from within all three county high schools and five middle schools. From this diverse group of students, the Shaping Orange County's Future will receive written, oral, and drawn items for inclusion into their report and presentation to elected officials of Orange County as well as on the Shaping Orange County's Future web site to re-affirm whose future we are planning, and that those people--the youth--have an opinion and a voice. The source of funds for Shaping Orange County's Future is a joint pool of municipal and county funding. Currently, the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro contribute 32.5% and 10.5% respectively while Orange County contributes the remaining 57%. From this funding, Shaping Orange County's Future has a full-time staff member who will provide her time and energy in designing and organizing the Youth Visioning Effort. In addition, funding in-kind will be provided by volunteer efforts and donated supplies. On-going funding will not be necessary because the Youth Visioning Effort will be completed at end of April 1998; however, it is hoped that those students who participate would elect to become part of the formal process of Shaping Orange County's Future and continue to participate throughout the project's anticipated end date of December, 1999. The vision created by the Shaping Orange County's Future initiative will be submitted to the county and municipal governments for adoption to guide their respective comprehensive and current planning efforts. Hopefiilly, some of the innovative ideas in this vision will have come from the future of the County—its youth.