May 2002

Grenaé Dudley, executive director of The Youth Connection, knows an effective way to move after-school programming up the city of Detroit's priority list is not just to work with the mayor, but to work with future mayors.

With no incumbent running and a wide open race, The Youth Connection (TYC) and its partners worked to get children's issues in general, and after-school programming in particular, on the platforms of all the candidates. As a result, not only has new mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made after-school programming a key component of his administration's agenda, he has coined a term, "Mayor's Time," to refer to the often unsupervised hours of 3 to 8 p.m. Plus, through his relationship with the new administration, TYC Board of Directors co-chair Judge Freddie Burton worked to have Dr. Dudley temporarily "loaned" to the new administration to direct Mayor's Time.

The experience has shown the value of 1) partnerships, including non-traditional ones, 2) good data 3) good messages and 4) political neutrality. More on each of these later.

A key campaign-related event was the Youth Forum, an informal debate in which young people (TYC Youth Ambassadors) asked the candidates questions about issues - all focused on children and youth. The mayoral candidates took this forum seriously; fifteen candidates attended the forum including the leading candidates, Gil Hill and Kwame Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick won the election, and because of his familiarity with TYC that grew during the course of the campaign, he tapped TYC to help with his transition. The new mayor asked Dudley to serve on his transition team regarding after-school opportunities. Recently, Mayor Kilpatrick asked Dudley to serve as part-time Director of Mayor's Time while continuing to lead The Youth Connection. "It's a tremendous opportunity," she says. "We can now really push the agenda we've been working on for years."

Urban Health Initiative Fellows involved with TYC were key to the effort. "Our Fellows challenged us to think about how we could leverage our position and raise the profile of the after-school issue with the candidates," says Dudley. One UHI Fellow, Think Detroit CEO Michael Tenbusch, was asked to chair Kilpatrick's recreation department transition team. Jack Kresnak, Detroit Free Press journalist and UHI Fellow, helped the Youth Ambassadors shape their questions for the candidates.

UHI Fellow Elizabeth Barton, Associate Director for the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University, secured WSU as host for the forum and helped reach out to the other primary partner, the League of Women Voters.
Getting an issue not merely on an elected official's "radar screen" but on his agenda of top priorities takes careful planning and an ability to seize opportunities as they present themselves. The key aspects of this effort were:

• Partnerships - the League of Women Voters of Detroit and Wayne State University were invaluable partners, according to Dudley. Both organizations are well-known institutions that are not automatically associated with youth issues in the minds of candidates. Having them as a partner added political weight to the effort and reinforced the message that interest in youth issues goes beyond the traditional youth advocacy groups.
  
  
• Good data and concise messages - The Youth Connection's efforts to generate and compile data on after-school opportunities (scope of the problem, costs, benefits of programming), as well as its marketing communications research to hone messages, paid off. Language and data that the major candidates began to use paralleled closely the language and data long used by the TYC. TYC made it easy for the candidates to incorporate messages and numbers about after-school opportunities into their campaigns.
  
  
• Neutrality - TYC did not campaign for a candidate, they campaigned for a cause. Their goal was that for whoever was ultimately elected, after-school opportunities would be a priority. They welcomed any and all candidates to the forum and freely gave their expertise throughout the campaign to any candidate who asked. Having a partner such as the League of Women Voters also helped assure neutrality. "The League helped us to remain impartial by, among other things, advising us to invite all candidates to the forum as opposed to trying to determine who the 'top' candidates are and inviting only them," she says. League President Della Goodwin moderated the forum, which also helped TYC remain neutral.

The Youth Connection is looking ahead to the Michigan Gubernatorial and Wayne County Executive races and is working with its partners to set dates for Youth Forums, hoping to once again assure that after-school opportunities are a priority for all candidates, and especially for the winners.

For more information on this site about after-school programming, click here. For more information on this site about The Youth Connection, click here.