Giving Compass' Take:

• Linda Poon explains how the Tallahassee Engaged in Meaningful Productivity for Opportunity aims to support disconnected youth, contributing to the city's resilience efforts. 

• How can funders boost existing programs to help them reach their full potential?

 • Read about community engagement's role in building resilience. 

A former high school principal, Kimball Thomas recalls being disheartened to see young adults loitering in some of the struggling neighborhoods of Tallahassee, Florida. He saw them in the streets and in parks, at bus stops and near convenience stores, “doing absolutely nothing,” he says. Some of those same kids call him their “street” principal.

Thomas heads TEMPO (Tallahassee Engaged in Meaningful Productivity for Opportunity), a city initiative he launched two years ago to curb violence by helping “disconnected youth” between 16 and 24 years who aren’t in school and who are unemployed earn their GED or secure a vocational job. The program has had 640 participants, many from “promise zones”—areas designated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as having the highest poverty and violence rates in the city. Thomas says some 7,000 teens and young adults are eligible, and the city hopes to reach 1,000 participants by 2020.

For Abena Ojetayo, Tallahassee’s first chief resilience officer, TEMPO is also an important element in the city’s recently adopted community resilience plan, which calls for developing climate-adapted infrastructure, but also puts “public safety and preparedness” as the first goal. That means ensuring that the most vulnerable communities in the city can bounce back from disasters, natural or man-made.

At a recent Resilient Cities Summit—held by the National League of Cities, the Urban Land Institute, and the U.S. Green Building Council—resilience officers from several cities suggested organizing focus groups to include the voices of their most vulnerable populations in their climate adaptation plans. Ojetayo argued, though, they should play a bigger role. “What I’m arguing for is that [cities] engage them directly in the solutions-making process, in a way that is economically viable for them,” she tells CityLab. “Because they need money.”

Read the full article about building resilience by helping disconnected youth by Linda Poon at CityLab.