Youthline America Mapping of New Orleans

The OJJDP FY 10 Earmarks Program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants, cooperative agreements, and other assistance authorized by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended, to organizations identified in the Conference Report to accompany the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 (P.L. 111-117), H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 111-366 at 702-714.

The GNO grant provides a youth engagement strategy with tools for youth between the ages of 10-18 to inform and advocate for their communities. Youth combined with adults living in New Orleans, with support from the GNO Afterschool Partnership, will create a safe interactive web-based communication system known as neworleans.ilivehere.info. The mapping initiative enables the identification of all resources and the resource level of all programs serving youth in any given New Orleans neighborhood. This data is useful to young people in identifying resources/opportunities, and to nonprofit and government agencies seeking to study patterns of resource distribution, and those planning to build new resources for the citizens of New Orleans. As an outgrowth of the Youth Mapping Initiative, the Afterschool Partnership will mobilize these same youth into a Youth Council. The Youth Council, to be entitled the Older Youth Initiative (OYI) will implement a strategic campaign to (1) expand/improve access to evidence-based youth programming in the out-of-school hours and (2) engage young people in providing critical policy development to drive municipal decision-making. The OYI is a targeted approach to build an infrastructure of evidence-based afterschool and youth development programs throughout Greater New Orleans that engage older youth, provide learning opportunities for their healthy development, and reduce the likelihood of risky behaviors and criminal involvement. GNOAP will utilize ongoing process evaluation measures as well as outcome measures to insure timely progress toward goals and eventual full attainment of objectives. Existing organizational management structures and accountability measures will remain in place to facilitate overall successful program operations. Additionally, initiative-specific performance measures will be enacted. NCA/NCF