Fall River is among All-America City Award winners for 2016

Fall River is among the 10 winners of the 2016 All-America City Awards, an honor given each year to towns, cities, counties, tribes, neighborhoods and metropolitan regions for outstanding civic accomplishments, the National Civic League announced last month.
 
All-America City Award criteria include impact, inclusiveness, public engagement and the use of collaborative problem-solving strategies linking the private, public and nonprofit sectors. The award honors communities for developing innovative solutions to ensure that all children are healthy and supported to succeed in school and life.
 
Working with groups such as the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, NCL is casting a spotlight on local examples of innovative and effective community problem-solving, recognizing the broad array of influences on the success of children and the need for all sectors to address those influences.
 
“These All-America cities are doing amazing work to engage their communities in helping to assure the well-being of young people,” said Doug Linkhart, president of the National Civic League.
 
Each community had to complete an application and make a presentation to a jury of civic experts focusing on three outstanding examples of collaborative community problem solving.
 
In addition to Fall River, the 2016 All-America cities are:
• Hayward, California
• Lakewood, Colorado
• New Britain, Connecticut
• Columbia Heights, Minnesota
• Asheboro, North Carolina
• Hartsville, South Carolina
• San Antonio, Texas
• Norfolk, Virginia
• Brown Deer, Wisconsin
 
More than 550 communities have won the All-America City Award since the program was launched in 1949.
 
Fall River has long been involved with America’s Promise, which has named the city one of the nation’s 100 Best Cities for Young People four times. Fall River trusts its young people to take leadership roles. (In fact, Mayor Jasiel Correia is in his 20s.)
 
A school-community partnership was created to bring together more than 30 agencies to ensure that youth concerns are taken into consideration by city programs and that youth are represented on different commissions and councils. The work resulted in a new Youth of the Year award program, a Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, and a Youth Candidates Night. Next, the group will be working to create a youth master plan.
 
Fall River was one of the first cities to adopt a Youth Bill of Rights. The 2009 ordinance was especially notable for its provisions to ensure youth involvement in decisions affecting them, which resulted in youth being appointed to a variety of boards and commissions and being consulted on a variety of topics.
 
Another example of youth voice was the founding of an initiative called Building Our Lives Drug-Free (BOLD), through which youth in the community successfully advocated for an ordinance banning the sale of tobacco in local pharmacies.
 
With the Mayor’s Attendance Task Force, the city brought together 20 agencies to create a community-wide effort to improve school attendance. The task force, comprised of community organizations, school district officials, and city leaders, meets monthly to scrutinize attendance figures and policies, and to launch attendance improvement efforts.
 
One of the task force’s most visible efforts has been the “Empty Chair” campaign, which involved placing bright red school chairs around town in libraries, businesses, and other locations to remind people of the importance of encouraging students to fill the empty chairs. The campaign was accompanied by community announcements, the distribution of brochures, and presentations to various groups about the need to improve school attendance.
 
The campaign created educational materials and held parenting classes stressing the importance of attendance. The campaign has also collaborated with a variety of local agencies, churches and community organizations to emphasize the importance of school attendance through community forums, church services, and other events.
 
As a result, attendance has improved by as much as 12 percent in some area schools during the past year.
 
Recognizing the importance of having parents involved in their children’s education, Fall River formed the Parent Academy, a joint effort by the director of early childhood and parent and community engagement and the superintendent. More than 60 people from 32 organizations came together to raise the necessary funds and design the initiative, among them businesspeople, school representatives, local officials and community members.
 
The academy planning committee surveyed parents to determine what classes would be of interest and received more than 700 responses in a variety of languages. As a result, more than 60 classes and training programs were designed, including courses on effective parenting, personal and emotional growth, career development, and personal health.
 
A rigorous evaluation is now underway to determine the program’s effect on parental resilience, social connections, concrete support in times of need, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children.