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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Lane County has a lot of nonprofits. Some say the county might even be oversaturated with these organizations. The thinking goes that when you have an overabundance of service organizations, you can dilute resources and talent. That's why recent action by a few local nonprofits to merge certain services is drawing attention. Today on the show, you'll hear from the leadership of Connected Lane County about their program to combine services with two other nonprofits to create a much-needed youth hub. The three organizations, Connected Lane County, Ophelia's Place and A Family for Every Child, say they're partnering to bring together education and career opportunities, mental health and wellness resources, paid work experiences and basic needs support in one welcoming location. The story of this collaboration and merging of resources is next on Oregon on the Record. Becky-Jo Samples, marketing director, and Jesse Nelson, executive director of Connected Lane County. Welcome to you both. Thanks so much for coming in.
Jesse Nelson: Thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be with you.
Becky-Jo Samples: Thanks for having us.
Dunne: Jesse, I'm going to start with you because you're fairly new in the role. Why don't you talk about what you've been doing at Connected Lane County? Tell the audience where you came from and what your role is.
Nelson: Oh, you bet, thank you. So I've been at Connected Lane County for about a year and a half now, and I came basically from across the street, if you will. I was at the University of Oregon working with undergraduate students, largely on their transition period, so it's transitioning to the university: How do you help them be successful when they get there? If they're declaring a new major, how do you help them in that process so they can have success as they're pursuing their academic dreams and goals? So in many ways, the transition to Connected Lane County wasn't a huge leap in terms of service delivery. We had the same kind of perspective: How do we help young people as they're thinking about these transition points in their life, maybe it's from high school on, or maybe it's coming into high school, and how do we help them find pathways that will really be fruitful for them in achieving some of the goals and life dreams that they have?
Dunne: Becky-Jo, could you explain to the audience what Connected Lane County is, and what you do?
Samples: Connected Lane County is a nonprofit organization serving young people in Lane County since 2014. We provide opportunities for young people to build professional, technical and life skills, and really help them prepare for what's next.
Dunne: You've made an interesting announcement, kind of a merger of sorts. Jesse, I'll go to you first. Explain the organizations you're partnering with, and remind folks what Ophelia's Place and A Family for Every Child are. What do they do?
Nelson: This is an exciting enterprise where we've pulled community partners together. The project you're talking about is a program called the Youth Hub, and it's going to be located in downtown Eugene on Seventh, just across from the Holt Center. The idea is to pull together youth-serving organizations in the community. We're all engaged in serving youth, but we each have unique strengths and different elements of service delivery. If we were to pull those together into a unified front, could we help more youth, and could we give young people the opportunity to come to one spot instead of navigating a large community of disparate resources spread across different sides of town? So there's a physical proximity goal for us, let's put more things under one roof. There's also this notion that if we were more intentional about collaboration and integration of the services we provide, what kind of benefit would that have for young people? We think the answer is a lot. Youth can come in and, with us at Connected Lane County, get job training and career navigation support. Now, to your question about what Ophelia's Place and A Family for Every Child offer: Ophelia's Place works with and serves girl-identified young people, providing everything from a safe space to pursue their educational goals and requirements in school to general developmental support. They help identify what someone might be interested in for the future and provide training to facilitate that, supporting the whole person as well, whether that's mental health and wellness support or infusing arts and crafts into that support. A Family for Every Child, in many ways, has some similarities. They take a holistic approach too, but they're focused largely on young people who have experienced the foster care system, maybe they're currently in foster care, or maybe they're transitioning out. I've used the word transition a couple of times now, but they're working with young people at a period of transition, and helping them build a foundation for the adult life that's coming.
Dunne: Becky-Jo, I'll go to you on the Youth Hub. Where will it physically be located, and what will someone walking through the doors experience there?
Samples: The Youth Hub is located at 44 West Seventh Avenue, right next door to Connected Lane County's Spark on 7th location. It'll be a space for young people to come hang out, access resources, explore opportunities available to them, access some basic-needs supports, and just be a third space for young people, without a lot of expectations placed on them. The space is very colorful. A lot of the colors were selected by young people who've been part of this planning process. There'll be lots of technology, computers and furniture that's inviting and interactive. There'll be a youth wall of art, and a mural in the front of the space being painted by young people in the community. There's also a new mural on the back of the building that was just painted by youth in a summer camp, not our summer camp, but one run by the city. And then we'll have some other space as well that provides opportunities for youth in our programs called "Excelerators."
Dunne: Jesse, especially as the executive director, what was your vision for how it would look, and how it would present itself to youth?
Nelson: I think a couple of pieces. One, this opportunity to collaborate with multiple organizations feels like such an important thing we need to be working on right now, to support the community, but I also think it strengthens us as organizations to do it that way. So that feels important. But when we think about the true impact for young people, one of the things we've recognized is that we have some very successful programs, and we have a lot of equipment and opportunities that youth in our programs get to access. But what about the young people who aren't formally registered in one of our programs? Can we increase the opportunities for them to engage? Maybe they've never done 3D printing before, maybe they've never worked with a laser engraver, but they get into these types of opportunities and realize they have a gift or an affinity for something. We want to expand that kind of access. It's almost like, you know, some universities or libraries have a craft center you can go into and just play a little bit, and that's an element of what we're wanting to provide too, an opportunity for young people to come in and play around with some new technology. Maybe it's even sewing, it's not a new technology, but a skill that isn't necessarily taught as much. Maybe they find it becomes a hobby they love, or for some it even parlays into something career-wise.
Dunne: If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Becky-Jo Samples and Jesse Nelson, both with Connected Lane County. Jesse, I'll stay with you, because I'm interested in how this collaboration among the three organizations came together. I think a lot of nonprofits think, maybe there are elements where we could partner with another agency to provide more bang for the buck. It sounds like that was perhaps the impetus behind this.
Nelson: It was. Looking back, it's been about a year in the making. Initially, it was about building relationships with other organizations doing similar things, and realizing there's some strength we could build if we worked in partnership. Then, in our situation with this Youth Hub project, a space suddenly became available, and the conversations shifted to, what if we really came together and programmed together? What would that look like, and could this space facilitate it? We were able to find amazing support through the Grace Serbu Foundation, an advised fund at the Oregon Community Foundation. The Fund said they loved this idea of a collaborative youth resource entity, and at that point we felt like we had enough fuel to keep the idea going and figure out how to logistically pull it off. For us, it really came down to, can we craft a shared mission for how we'd want to use the space, and can we bring all of our staffs together to make it work? Each step along the way is a testament to the creativity of all our partners in this. Everyone has been able to say, yes, we can make this happen, and youth service is really the driving force for all of us.
Dunne: Talk about how the Youth Hub plays into that, the overall collaboration around that kind of education.
Nelson: Let me answer in two parts, one a little more abstract, one very practical. On the abstract front, what does career technical education provide? It gives youth a chance to get engaged with skill building in a skill that's applicable both to careers and to life. It can be a benefit to someone to learn how to plumb. Maybe they're not going to become a plumber, but they find that they love it and use it in their own life around their own home. So CTE provides both vocational readiness and life skill development. That's how we think about the hub theoretically. We want youth to have access to these experiences to skill build, and maybe that becomes vocational in its application, or maybe it's just a life skill that becomes part of who they are as they develop. That's the overarching idea. In practice, what we want is for this space to be like a maker space for young people, where they can come in and engage with CTE-related equipment, play around and get familiar with it, and also become aware of the types of programs we offer at Connected Lane County, so they can engage with them throughout the year.
Dunne: We're going to take a break. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. When we come back, more of our conversation with Connected Lane County about their new Youth Hub.
And we're back. I'm Michael Dunne, and you're listening to Oregon on the Record. Let's get back to our conversation with Connected Lane County about the new Youth Hub. Thank you, Becky-Jo. I'll go to you, because as the marketing director, part of your job is telling the story of the organization. How do you do that, and how do you do it in collaboration with these new organizations? Getting the word out is, I imagine, a big part of the need, so that more youth can take advantage of this new combined space.
Samples: What we're doing is focusing on the Youth Hub as a space for young people, rather than putting the organizations first. Our goal is to make sure young people understand this space is for them, and we're working together in that we're all promoting the space, together or separately, however that works for us. We've built the branding around the Youth Hub being its own standalone thing, and each organization is just supporting that. We're just letting the Youth Hub be the Youth Hub.
Dunne: Jesse, obviously when organizations come together, sometimes there's a challenge in figuring out who's going to do what. Talk us through how you and the other leaders tried to put this together, because I imagine it's not always easy.
Nelson: It's true, and I think again it's a testament to our partners in this, that at the outset we agreed to talk through those challenging pieces as directly and clearly as we could, and name them from the get-go. There's been a real willingness to say, sometimes we're going to get it right, and sometimes we might not, but let's have the type of partnership where we can talk openly. That's fundamentally been an important ingredient for us. One of the things that helped clarify it for us, too, is that in terms of the funding we've received, we've run that through Connected Lane County, so Connected Lane County effectively serves as the administrative arm of the enterprise. Then it becomes a matter of figuring out how we ensure we're creating a space that reflects each of our different entities in a way that feels authentic to all of us, and how we share staffing and program delivery, which becomes a little easier. We agreed early on that a single administrative entity would make sense, and the rest of us would fill in from there. As Becky-Jo just commented, this focus on youth development is the key mission, so how do we all fill in to make that happen?
Dunne: Becky-Jo, I know you've been there a good amount of time. Could you tell the audience about some of the success stories you've witnessed among kids who've used the services, and what your hope is for kids going through the Youth Hub as well?
Samples: I've been with Connected Lane County for five years now, and in that time I've seen amazing youth doing awesome things. I'll name-drop one, a young person named Quinton, who came into our summer invention lab program with no interest in STEM education, science or math, none of that in school. Their eyes were opened to this new opportunity and what it could mean for their future, and now they're at Howard University studying engineering. Seeing them go from having no interest to that becoming their career path was tremendous, and Quinton is just one example. We've also had many young people come into our Excelerators programs who didn't know what they were going to do next with their lives. Most recently, a young person named Dakota went through our manufacturing Excelerator and is now employed at Newood, working in manufacturing. We've seen the full gamut of young people experiencing what they've often called life-altering experiences. Really, our goal is just to provide opportunity. We're not pushing kids one way or another, we're just saying, here's some things you might be interested in, explore. The Youth Hub is going to be a space where all three organizations can provide additional support for young people, hopefully open their eyes to what's next for them, whatever that might be, and make sure they have the support to get there.
Dunne: Jesse, I'll end it this way. Talk about your hope for the Youth Hub. Is it possible it could become its own standalone organization at some point? What's your three-to-five-year vision for the Youth Hub?
Nelson: At this point, my hope is that it becomes a place that youth across the Eugene area know exists, and recognize as a place they can go. It's a safe space. There are opportunities there that they might not get in any other facet of their life, and there are adults there they can trust, so if they're in need of support or assistance with whatever they might be facing, it's a place they can go. This awareness building for year one is certainly my biggest hope, that we can have a known presence by the end of this first year. Thinking beyond that, one of the things that has been so key for us in standing this place up is having youth voice part of it from the very beginning. Literally, at our very first meeting, the Lane Education Service District, which has a group called the Youth Voice Network, effectively a meta youth advisory group that draws from a number of youth advisory councils across the county. We met with them back in March and asked, if there was a space devoted to youth in downtown Eugene, what should it be like, what should it have, what should be offered there? Members of that group have stayed with the planning process throughout. As we start thinking about years two and three, this becomes another key piece. We need to talk to youth and ask what's working, and where there are gaps in their developmental experience that we, as a joint nonprofit venture, can support. Moving forward, we want to be able to support more youth in developing their path after high school. That might be college for some, or a career path that doesn't require postsecondary education for others. How do we put youth in a position where they can feel a sense of hope about their future? That's what we're trying to instill, and we want youth guiding the process as we go. Right now we've got insight from the three organizations, and there'll be more. We're going to be pulling in more community involvement. The three organizations helping stand it up now aren't going to be the only three. A year from now, if we have this conversation, we'll be talking about many others too.
Dunne: Very exciting. He's Jesse Nelson, and she's Becky-Jo Samples, both with Connected Lane County. Thank you so much for coming in and talking with us.
Nelson: Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
Samples: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Monday on the show, you'll hear about a new national organization rushing to preserve data and historical documentation related to many institutions in America, including national parks, as the Trump administration works to erase much of it in the name of eradicating DEI. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
