Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Bringing the public safety committee to order. Roll call, please.

Council members Coleman? Here. Johnson? Jost? Here. Kim? Here. Naker? Here. Yang? Chair Bowie? Five present, two absenteeing, Johnson, Ning who are excused.

Thank you so much Polly. Well there is a question if my name has changed. I still will remain as council member Bowie here but I just had a wedding about two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago. So, but welcome everyone. Good afternoon.

I just want to just like welcome all the programs, all the staff that is here and our most recent recent committee member, council member Molly Coleman who represents Ward 4 and also is the neighboring Ward member with Ward 1. So I just want to just give like a quick background for this committee because we are in our third convening and also just give some time for you Councilmember Coleman to just understand like the objectives of this public safety committee. So with the supports of my colleagues, the goal for this committee was designed to advance public safety policies, programs, initiatives. We take this partnership really seriously across the city and the state and the county to learn about all of the public safety initiatives and how we inform that in the budget process. When this committee was first established well, I already talked about that.

When it was first established, our first meeting we recognized the National Gun Violence Awareness Month where we heard from our partners and our leadership at the Office of Neighborhood Safety who worked tirelessly to drive down gun violence in our city and we know like our mayor had mentioned and also our police leadership have mentioned before. We have historic low numbers when it comes to gun violence. Also, we've heard from our first responders particularly around our safe summer nights which I believe has came to a close and we had opportunity to bring all of our city workers together to share resources, hot dogs and good music with our neighbors. We also had heard from Fire Chief Inks who presented about the recruitment efforts of excelling at attracting the best and the brightest to our fire force and also expanding more people into public service. And our second meeting was focused on chemical dependency which we heard from County Attorney John Choi which which I actually believe might have been his first time coming to a City Council Committee meeting.

He shared crime data particularly around the university corridor and also insights from his office particularly around how he's working on prosecuting drug related crimes and also touch lightly on the adult substance abuse courts which we'll hear in future particularly from the state courts department. We also heard from Molly who is executive director from Listening House. They have been phenomenal partners. They discussed the Work Now program which is an initiative that provides communities facing homelessness with jobs and dignity and gives them the opportunity to build positive relationships. Most importantly building pride you know taking part in cleaning and caring for our downtown areas and St.

Paul areas. So, that brings us to today which the theme of this convening is focused on community first public safety particularly for our youth and as we enter into back to school season, we are in the back to school season, we are reminded especially with the devastating news of the mass shooting that just took place earlier this morning which is the second active shooting with less than twenty four hours. We understand that safety is not is not and cannot be a privilege, it must be a right. Which brings us to the importantness of the focus that we are on today which is learning and discovering our young people's talents and the wellness programs and initiatives that are in our city particularly around how we are driving down youth violence prevention. And we have you all have copies and had a chance to hopefully review it.

But if you have any questions just raise your hand, know, I will do my best to make sure I see people. But we just have one item on the agenda today where we're going to hear from Director Andy Rodriguez and his amazing team and partnerships for Parks and Recreation staff report on youth violence prevention. So, Andy could take it away.

Thank you. Good afternoon council members, Andy Rodriguez, Park Director, and for the record, a proud graduate of St. Paul Central High School. Council Member Coleman, welcome. Grateful for the chance to be here today to highlight the role of our park system and the way it plays in supporting public safety public safety for our young people and for families across the city.

As you can see, we have a strong team here representing parks. Our presentation will focus on the work happening in our 26 recreation centers and through the Awakenings program, one of the city's inaugural community first public safety initiatives. None of this work would be possible without our frontline staff, who are truly the heartbeat of our system. Every day, they welcome community members without knowing what each person has faced just minutes before walking through the doors, and every day, they respond with compassion, care, and creativity. What makes our work both complex and powerful is its reach, from free programming for youth and teens to creating safe spaces, to responding quickly when challenges arise.

We work side by side with St. Paul Public Schools, law enforcement, various community partners, and neighbors to meet needs that go far beyond just recreation. It's this combination of dedication, partnership, and responsiveness that makes our parks and recreation system essential to building stronger, safer, and healthier communities. And I'll just say this, I'm really proud of this work. I'm proud of the staff who show up every day to open those rec center doors or serve our parks.

Proud of the partnerships that they've helped to make us stronger, and proud that together we're making a real difference for the people within this city. This isn't easy work, but it's very meaningful work, and it's an honor to be a part of it. So with that, I will turn it over to Recreation Services Manager Shana Abraham, and Recreation Program Supervisor, long titles, Gina Stokes, to go through the first few slides. Thank

you, Director Rodriguez. Thank you council members for having us here today. My name is Shana Abraham. I use she, her pronouns, and I'm the rec services manager for Saint Paul Parks.

I would like to also say thank you council members for having me. My name is Gina Stokes, she, her pronouns, recreation program supervisor for the Northwest Area.

I sometimes forget to add that I'm also currently overseeing RITE Track, so you're gonna get hear a little bit from me about that after we talk about rec as well. And then you'll get to hear from our wonderful Awakenings team as well just today. So as most of you know, our rec centers are at the heart of public safety in our city. People come into our centers looking for things to do, looking for resources, looking for support. Our our buildings, our newer buildings in particular, are designed to be flexible and meet the needs of our community.

Our older buildings, we have fabulous team members who make them work to to to meet those needs. And as Andy already mentioned, we work with hundreds of partners, and we'll dive into a few of those in a little bit. But really, at the heart of recreation is the opportunity to pursue a life full of happiness. It's a basic fundamental right that we all have. And we do that in many ways throughout rec, but we see that as, like, the essential piece of public safety.

So providing people positive, engaging, and fun activities to do is not just a deterrent, but it gives them meaning and connections that then they use in the rest of their lives and helps us build a stronger community. Everybody who comes through our doors gets to connect with somebody, whether that's they are connecting with a staff person in the building, a volunteer coach, or another adult in the class that they're taking together, that's at the heart of what we do is building that social connection that doesn't just then live in rec centers. It lives throughout our city. So a little bit about the programming that we provide for youth and teens. As you've all heard, we have free sports here in Saint Paul.

We're very proud of our free sports, and we continue to see growth in those numbers. But, also, what you know is free sports isn't just sports. It's, again, more connections. It's opportunities for young people to take pride in who they are and and develop their own skills and and then take that pride and those the the sense of the the self esteem that they get from that into the rest of their world so that when they come up against something that might be a harder choice, they know that there's a community and that they have the skills and ability to do what's right, not just do what the other kids might be doing. We offer our free rec check program at 23 rec centers.

It's free programming for kids k through fifth grade during the school year and k through five during the summer. During rec check, we focus a lot on social and emotional learning. Right? So the way that we talk about it is that if we can help all young people be identify their feelings and then respond to those feelings instead of just responding to an incident, think of how different our community would be if if we all had those skills. I think about how different my life would be if I always had those skills.

Right? But so how we teach that to young people is really important. It's the core of what we're trying to do in the rec check program. It's also really important because families need a place for the young people to go after school when they're still at work. We also provide team programming and mobile recreation. I'm gonna turn it over to Gina for a second.

So a few examples of some of the team programming we do beyond the sports is, we just had a successful get down where we're offering young people partnership with local artists, video production, different than just sports. They can do music. They can learn behind the scenes, all free. I think one of the groups even did some swags to learn some entrepreneurship skills, which is amazing. The other huge part is we provide access. Right? Not everyone wants to be in a sport or be in a club, but they wanna come into that center. They wanna feel safe. They wanna build that connection with the youth workers that we have on-site, and we work hard to provide that. Another example would be we recently adjusted our high school 18 U boys or coed, I should say, basketball to adjust with the timeline that the high schools offer their tryouts.

So we're not missing anyone. So we're being equitable in our offerings. We moved the night from a Saturday morning. I have a few teens. I know getting up in the morning is tough, so we moved it to Thursday night.

We moved the location to Oxford Jimmy Lee so we could partner with the Frogtown Loop for free access and transportation along with other city vans. We were intentional about seeking out youth workers that love to work with teens that coach to provide also that relationship before on and off the court, so we can provide some other services, homework help, different things like that. So, just another way. We went intentionally went into high schools to promote and build relationships as well so we can meet the young people where they were at. It's important to continue that connection in our schools, outside of our schools, and in our communities.

So, we're really excited about the work we continue to do with teens. And then lastly, we ask them what they want. We can't always think we know what they want, so we want to provide that space to hear their voice. And they've been very instrumental in helping a lot with our restorative work, with our community expectations, and with the way that we provide intentionality in our spaces to have people feel safe and welcome. We learn from them.

The last thing we'll mention that we want to highlight in programming is our mobile recreation. So a lot of people think of rec services in St. Paul and they think of our 26 amazing rec centers. But we also have a team that does recreation outside of rec centers. And little known fact, during the summer, our mobile rec team actually serves more young people than our 23 rec check programs combined.

That's how many young people they're seeing every week throughout the city. So they're going to to passive parks, places where there aren't rec centers, places where community has asked us to be, where they're seeing the need for more engagement. On top of that aspect of the program, we are excited that we have our mobile climbing wall and our game truck back this year. Those are both things that we take to community events, but we also, when it isn't scheduled for a community event or when we see a need in a community, we're popping up with those so that we can engage with the young people in those spaces too. So while we think about rec a lot in the spaces, we're also out in community trying to connect with everyone there as well.

Partnerships. When we started to put this presentation together, we were like, let's put all the partners on a slide. And then that just didn't work because it was way too many partners. It is they are key to the work that we do, and I and I know most of you all know this already. We have a a whole list of partners.

I'm not gonna read all of them off to you, but I wanna highlight some of the work that our partners that we do with our partners and how that really enhances our work and our ability to address public safety needs. So I'm gonna highlight a partnership that we have with Saint Paul Public Schools. We have two community youth workers who work at our Jimmy Lee Oxford Community Center. But they spend part of their day every day during the school year in the school. So they start their day at eleven.

They're at Central High School. They're hanging out in the lunch room. They're in the hallway during passing time. They're building relationships with the young people there. And then and then when they come across the street at the end of the day, they are there to lead activities and programs that those young people wanna participate in because they have those relationships and found out what those programs are. They spend a lot of time doing some girls groups and boys groups. And and we don't call it social emotional learning, but that's what they're doing during that time as well. What we've seen from that partnership is that's like just the super small part of that partnership. Right? So, Office of Neighborhood Safety, SPPD, and then St.

Paul Public Schools, the Central High School, but also their safety and security team. We all are able to work together to address concerns when we see them coming. So, it might be that a teacher hears something in the school about a potential fight after school. Our team's getting notified. ONS is getting notified.

And we're able to get people to the school or to Jimmy Lee before school gets out to help address those concerns. And we've seen just a significant decrease in the number of incidents that happen of those kind of larger fights that were happening. And I really believe that most of that is due to this relationship and the way that we're working together. We're really excited because we're starting that partnership at the new North End Community Center this fall, working with Washington High School and junior high. So that's really exciting.

Yes, I will also just add, it's really important that we provide that space in our community centers for partners to come and provide those services because a lot of people feel safe in their communities but maybe are a little hesitant going to get other resources. So to kinda add what Shana said, we have that collaboration and community. And one example I wanted to give is recently the spire unit of the Saint Paul Police reached out to North End and said, have this group of young men we're working with and could we use some space to do that work? And we were like, absolutely. One of the I won't call it challenges, but things we learned from it by working together was we were checking in a young man and we realized he was banned from one of the rec centers, hence why they're working with him to get him back in reentry.

So we made an agreement. We sat and met with the young man and said, yep, you can be in here during this time. We also continued that partnership to work with the Spire unit officer that's mentoring these young men. She's gonna be part of the restorative and reentry at the center after his band is up. So we built a stronger sense of collaboration community and resources for this young person to be supported overall even after and back in the center and made that real connection. So, that's another example of just real work across departments, but then also learning from each other in our community.

Not on our notes, but I want to highlight real quickly. Sorry. Is the resource distribution that we do at many of our rec centers. It's not at all of our rec centers. It's not something that's offered everywhere. One thing we do offer every day during the summer is free lunch for all kids, as well as snack after school, or a hot meal, depending on the site. And the food distribution, we have some sites where actually give away food to. But the feeding the kids is such an important part to their social emotional well-being, their physical well-being, obviously, but also their social emotional well-being. And so, I just wanted to highlight, we work with St. Paul Public Schools Youth Prize, and there's one other at one rec center, I can't remember their name right now, so I will let you know in the future.

But just really proud of all of the work. You'll see some team members back there From the rec side, we've got the Awakenings team, and some rec team members back there. They do a fabulous job of developing these relationships, and maintaining them, and growing them, and really being able to respond to our community's needs through. We don't always have the resources, but we have the space and often some staff time to help support that. And so that's really exciting work for us.

So our last slide is about community response. And as I just pointed out, we have some of our rec team and our Awakenings team here with us today. Andy said he's proud of this team. You're going to hear me say I'm proud of this team. This team is amazing. Like every day people walk into our centers and we have no idea. Sorry. We have no idea what that person was going through before they walked through those doors. And this team responds to them all the time with care and compassion. And it's just it's really great to see and I appreciate it a lot.

And I know our community appreciates it. And it's just really it's it's just very moving to see a young person walk into our building at what we would say is like an 11 or a 12 on a scale of five and see our team members be able to de escalate that without even knowing why they were there. Right? That's real skill. They do it with adults.

They do it with young people. We have people who come in high. All sorts of different issues in every single rec center in this town. And they do just such a fabulous job of responding and welcoming people back in after bad things have happened. It's not easy to have somebody cuss you out, spit in your face, potentially take a swing at you, And then a few months later, like, welcome them into your space and say, alright, that happened. How are we gonna move forward? And that's what this team does all the time. You got it. Yeah.

Yeah, I would just echo that. I mean, the amount of de escalation this team does daily is amazing. The amount of care, love they give these young people even through conflict, crisis, through everything they've gone through is amazing every day. We've had instances of summer with weapons, with fights, with parents bringing kids up to fight, right? Usually it's in they still keep showing up and they want to keep being there for that community and for St.

Paul and that's just amazing and I just am so appreciative of the work I can support every day with them. And without the community response and the partners as well, one example I was thinking of is one of the centers that I manage is Frogtown Community Center, and we had an unfortunate accident about a year ago with a young 11 year old football player and basketball player that was accidentally shot at a house. And the community came together. Office of Neighborhood Safety supported us, connected us with some resources, Irreducible Grace. They came a few days.

We did breathing sessions with the kids. The staff through the relationships got the kids and families to come in the space because it was a little kind of unknown and what is this? And through all of those connections, I think it really made a difference and gave some tools and skills. We partnered with the football program. We gave just space for people to just be in that space, to feel safe, to ask questions, to be upset, to not know what's going on. Yes.

Yeah. Well, thank

you so much for sharing just like your most like authentic truth particularly around all of the challenges. Most importantly just like the connection that you have with your community response plan and it seems like you have a really great relationships with many of the youth. I do see that there's two council members that have their hands up. I was going to start with council member Naecker and then also council president Naecker, excuse me and then we move to Vice President Kim.

Thanks, Chair Bui. And I echo your thanks, really appreciate hearing your eloquent description of what this looks like on the ground. Forgive me if I'm just misremembering or forgetting this, but I don't recall Tell us more about the community response team. I guess I don't remember who this is, who

It's not a community response team. It's just our team.

It's

It's your team. I'm sorry.

Okay. Yeah. I was like, these sound like amazing people. I mean, and Of course. Are. They are amazing people. Yeah. They are amazing people and

Okay. Yes. Yes.

Because my next question was gonna be if this was some sort of specialized team that you brought together, whether this was something we're also sharing with other partners in libraries and other spaces, but this is your incredible team doing this great work.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Even more

impressive. It's our everyday perks and rec staff.

Yes. I also, to be fair, also had that thought. Was like, oh, is that new?

That's a dedicated team.

So I was like

It's very incredibly I

just meant that they're very dedicated to their work. They're dedicated. Yes. My apologies.

Got it.

Okay. No, they absolutely are. I think the things that I want to lift up was really around the restorative reentry and sort of the practice of how what this looks like in our rec centers because I know like Gina, you've also been in those conversations when we even relooked at our policies and what does it look to have a restorative eye for kiddos. Like, in a world, in a space that creates conditions to normalize compliance, how are we allowing kids to be kids with sort of the appropriate level of limitations of behavior? And because in my mind a rec center is where every kid should go well but of course to an extent, right?

And so that restorative entry part is just so incredibly important and especially for the North End with the library being right across the street. So they get kicked out of the library maybe the next best place is the rec center but only for specific type of behavior. So I just really want to lift that up and commend just like the staff work that went into looking at that policy which we passed earlier this year at the council. And the other thing I want to name as we continue to think about what does what are the demands on staff to continue to provide this level of community response? And so one thing I don't feel like I'm speaking out of values here at all is like if we have our frontline staff responding to not knowing but responding to varying levels of trauma and experience when they're walking through their staff?

How are we also sort of like bottom up top down into the middle looking at the ways that internally then we're offering resources, extra staffing, coverage, training to receive our own staff that are coming off, you know, our the floors of our rec centers and coming into work. How are we making sure that as we continue to redefine what unprecedented looks like for us, How we're supporting our staff to ensure the longevity. I'm looking at Gina who I've known this entire time since I've had any connection with the city. How do we make sure there are really great folks that stay here and continue to give back to communities that they love and care about? And the last thought is the community response is very catered.

Know, Jeanie, you said we learned from them but that's also why some of the centers offer food resources and some don't, right? That's why some have girls groups where they get appropriate clothing for supportive clothing for gym and others don't. And so, while that might sound like some get some don't, really what that sounds like to me and where that lands with me is there's a very strong equity lens across the board inside of our parks and rec services. So I just really, really commend the work that you're doing and the actual last thought is it's also why we called it the North End Community Center and not the North End Rec Center. So thank you so much for your leadership there and honestly incredible work as usual.

Thank you, council member. I don't

know if you want

to answer. Thank

you for the question about staff. We I think that's like probably the thing that keeps me up the most, if I'm being totally honest. We are working we use EAP through the city's resources when incidents happen. We also partner with the Office of Neighborhood Safety and their response team. They come and meet with our team after significant incidents.

We try to allow for flexible scheduling. When we can, we try to allow for transfers they're requested due to significant incidents in buildings. And we're continuing to look at how we respond right after an incident. There's not a great answer right now. One of the things we are looking at is like a response team.

So, like, if something significant happens at Hazel Park, then the next day that team does not necessarily have to also be there to welcome the rec check kids, that we have a team of other folks ready to come into that space. We have not figured out exactly how that works yet, but it is something we're working on. And then staff development and training is something we've been working really hard on for the last two and a half years. So, we offer training in de escalation. We're actually looking for a new de escalation trainer right now.

And then, we actually have staff led cohorts. So, from the month of January the months of January to May every year, all full time staff or anybody working at a point eight or above are required to participate in a cohort. So, they get together with the exact same group of people for five months. It's an opportunity for them to develop community with each other. And then, they get to pick what their topic is for those five months. So, it might be program quality. It might be working with teens. It might be how to run sports, right? Like, it's Some of them are admin, right? But the intention behind it is so that staff have some autonomy and say in what their training is, and that they get to meet people from other centers.

Sometimes when you work at the one rec center, that feels like all of parks and rec right there, and you don't get to connect with everybody else. So, we've seen some good success in that space, and we're really excited to keep that going for this year. So, we've done it for two years. We'll be doing our third year coming up.

And I'll just add to we we show up. Like, even if we don't know what to do, we show up. We debrief. We have those real conversations and connect to resources. We're also partnering. We we have a grant to do some restorative work and training with our teams because that's not work that is easy to do. We've done some circles with our staff. We've we've brought a cohort together like Shana was saying around our community expectations and our policy, and we started with a circle with our team. I can tell you it was very helpful for me. I got a lot down there that I didn't realize I had, but I think it's important to continue that work too because at the end of the day, like, we're we're working with humans and there's not one right answer.

We just have to keep supporting the work and provide other avenues to continue that work and connectedness because you're right, they continue to show up. There's times we say, you don't have to come and they say, we want to come, but we want to be great question and we're continuing to provide those resources, Mosheeda and Andy's support.

And then we

have a question from Councilmember Ray Coleman.

Thank you. Thank you both so much. This is incredible to hear about. One question that I have is just about how immigrant youth are accessing services right now. And just given the current political climate, if you all have noticed any changes in young people not feeling comfortable going into these types of public spaces? Or and then I guess the second question related is if there has been training or support for staff of what might happen if ICE were to come to a rec center?

For sure. Thank you for that question, council member. We have provided guidance to our team of what to do if ICE shows up in our spaces. It follows city policy and relies heavily on Parks leadership to come and mitigate and mediate that situation. We have not seen a significant decrease of immigrant youth coming into our spaces.

Off the top of my head right now, I'd attribute that to the fact that they trust the people working in the building. It is a significant concern for our team. It's a question that we get every few weeks, particularly from new team members that are trying to figure out what they're supposed to do. But, yeah, thankfully we haven't had any of those issues yet. I

really appreciate you, customer Coleman, for asking about that because we're thinking about people's overall safety, so like that is something that has been really confusing and scary for people. So I would like to also mention that I think we had a couple weeks ago actually where we talked about the separation ordinance and reviewing that to see if there's anything necessary to update that also offering that education. And as we I don't want to have a hard pivot because it is all connected, but I do want to make sure that we have enough time. So we have just about like ten minutes really and I want to have enough time here for our young people and highlight the Awakenings program and I see we also have some partners and consultants here as well. I'm going to pass it.

If you don't mind, we can get through this pretty quickly. So we can pass it to some of the people that's here today.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Shana and Gina. I'm going to welcome Gwen Peterson up to speak on behalf of the Awakenings program.

Good afternoon, counsel. My name is Gwen Peterson. I'm the manager of the Community First Public Safety Division for Parks and Recreation. I want to speak briefly and introduce my team who will be going through the slides and introducing themselves to you as they speak. But, I wanted to provide a little bit of a framework in which the work that they do is so impactful in St.

Paul. There are six community intervention community youth intervention specialists in our team. Each of them work with a maximum of 20 kids. Some of them have wait lists. They conduct two age groups of group work with youth between the ages of six and 10, 11, 10 and 11 and 14.

They also do one on one work with these youth, meeting them in schools or wherever it's convenient to work with them one on one throughout the week. They also work with 15 to 18 year olds on one on one counseling and support and mentoring. They've been doing this work for five years. There's over one hundred and fifty years of youth work experience amongst them. So, I trust that. They also recruit their youth and they are out in the community building relationships with these youth where they find them. So, they're I consider them professionals in what they do. They're very impactful and they're very committed to the work. So, I want to introduce my team, if you would come up. And we'll go through the slide quickly.

And we know we don't have a lot of time. We were prepared for a fifteen minute presentation, but we'll go as quickly as we can. And, you'll be hearing from four of the youth who are actually in our program. And, I just personally think that it's more important to hear from the proof in the pudding. We know what we do, but they are the result of the work. It's more impactful for you to hear that the work is real and what it means to the people that we work with.

Thank you, Peterson. And not to cut you off, I just want to make sure we get your title.

I'm the manager of Community First Public Safety Division and

Parks Okay? And

I'll hand it over to my very capable team.

Hello. My name is Steven Randall. I'm the program coordinator for Awakenings. And so, the slide I'm going talk about is the we call it the wheel. And so, when I got the opportunity to leave our direct services to come and start this new division, we call awakenings.

We we even came up with that name. We sat in a room and so we're gonna keep this because it was started with a conversation about what do you see out there when you're dealing with the kids and at what age you notice different behaviors starting to intensify. So after that first year, we said, okay, some of the things we thought came up with were right, some of them we were kind of iffy, but we also had to add new things. So for the next year, at the end of the year, we revisited and then we kind of made it look prettier. And so and we we could really see what the changes that the work that we started to do.

We could see what we were doing and we were right with the approach. So now I'm gonna leave it to Marcel. My

name is Marcel Thompson. I'm a community youth intervention specialist. This design logo that we have here, it was done by two tenth grade, two 10 year olds that was in my group. One drew a picture of the son of the kids looking at his saying that they was excited to join the awakenings group. The other one was a kid dreaming about his future being in the awakenings. So that's how we get and staff, we added Saint Paul downtown in. That was late.

This

program started five years ago at the start of COVID. You know, people were very scared and nervous. A lot of people they that we knew that was dying and they had to stay away from each other. So it was hard for us to get, you know, kids and when the kids that we did have them, we had to have them social distancing. And then and then right as that was happening, the death of George Floyd and boy, people was really angry and trauma was within a lot of my kids family.

One of my kids in particular, he was out there protesting on 94 with his parents and the truck a truck came through there and almost hit him. So that was really devastating. I was glad to be there to help him work through that, you know, so.

Sherina Rogers, community youth intervention specialist. Our post pandemic recruitment was very different than any of us were used to. The kids were different. They didn't want we we were out with icy pops and popsicles like, hey. Do you guys no. We don't even want those. We don't wanna be in any groups. So we had to be very flexible with how we recruited, and what we did was just take time to be in our parts of the city and really be present so that the kids and the youth can get to know us and build relationships and trust. When we were able to do that, we were able to ask the kids what did they need and that's the way we made our framework about how we were going to work with them on their trauma. We don't really use that language a lot like, Hey, we're going to work on trauma.

That obviously doesn't go over well with youth, but we do try to give them language to express themselves and their feelings. We also do food experiences. Sometimes our group will try a star fruit today or some guava juice. We also do a mental health camp that we do in the fall every year and we go and have fun and learn new techniques for self care as well.

Hi, my name is Matica Robertson Moody. Tim

Simmons, Community Youth Intervention Specialist, product of St. Paul. And as we have a a central high school graduate. Hey. Hey. Watch it. Anyway, as you said, we say authentic connections. It starts with how we build relationships with these kids Mhmm. With the youth that we do serve. And it's up on them. We build but they are the one who connect to us. It's how they connect to us. As you see in the slide in that how we are here, this is them. And as we show up and we have our groups, they break off. We're still that constant with them.

Then they show back up and connect. And then once we have that connection, it gets to be solid. They build that trust with us. You know, as we say, we pay attention. You know, our work is very on how they show up to us and how they deal with us. And that's the connection that we build. And once we have that connection, they're still with us to this day. As Gwen said earlier today, when they get 15 to 18 years old, they are still connected to us.

Now you all get me. My name is Natika Robertson Moody. I'm a community youth intervention specialist and also a central grad. I actually graduated with miss Anika Bogie. So as my coworkers have so eloquently put, we do everything with intention in our groups. We are intentional about how we connect with the kids, how we show up even when they are not showing up. We are always there. We're always trying to be a presence and build that connection with them so that it is a lasting impression. It's not just coming in doing transactional things. They're coming in helping you in one situation.

We are helping you in all situations, whether it's at home, school, in the community. We're able to show up in a way that other rec centers are not just due to capacity. So we try really hard to be intentional in how we work with the kids, everything that we do with them. Every kid has their own guideline of how their path is going to go. Each kid has their own goal of what they're working towards. So with as Gwen said, we have 20 kids. So between all of us, there's a 120 kids that have multiple goals that we are constantly working towards. So yeah, it's hard work.

Think it's that one. And that's the layer of our work. And that's us showing up being authentic. Because you know, with the youth these days, the youth that we serve, they'll see if you're authentic or not. They'll know if you are what's your intention? They're gonna ask, what is your intention? Some of them is going to be around, someone's going to hide. You know? But we show up every time, every day. You know? And that's that's who we are. That's the work that we do. We're very authentic. And with the youth that we serve, they dictate if they're going to be in group. They dictate how they're going to be in group.

And then that's where as we have to accept and how we accept Some days, some days they might not have a good day. Then that's where our one on ones come in and we talk to them about their day. We talk to them about how's it going. That's where we show up at. We're that constant in their life. That's our authentic.

We work with a mental health professional, Doctor. Sweeney. We meet with her once a month and we just go over things that we may need help with that with our youth. You know, she's the professional here. So, she helps us come up with plans, techniques, wording to help our kids reach the goals that we're trying to get them to reach.

And

she also helps us work on our self care because doing working with 20 kids who have a lot of things that they're going through, sometimes we can also take those things home. So, she helps us build our techniques for our own self and she also I wrote this down because I love when she says self care isn't selfish, it's main So, it's hard to pour from a cup that's not full.

Hello. My name is Michael Bridgeford and I'm going to talk a little bit about the youth that we serve that are 15 to 18. Once the kids are 14 and over, we mentor them one on one, do school visits, and we also utilize them to help talk to the younger youth. So, they've already been through some of the challenges and things. So, they give the younger youth advice.

In addition to that, they kind of paved the way. They kind of paved the way for the younger youth. And, we also utilize them to help us plan programming and, you know, give us a little bit more insight. Yep, that's about it.

So as a part of our work, we come in and we interrupt behaviors. So as a result of us interrupting behaviors, we get kids who are more social emotionally regulated. They're able to have conflicts and not let it blow up their entire day or week. They're able to go and have hard conversations and deal with difficult conflicts and difficult issues without being completely derailed. They have the self confidence to know that they are able to contribute to their community. So a part of that is the community outcomes as well.

Hello, I'm Makini Faluca, community youth intervention specialist and some improved behaviors that you can benefit from and the community can benefit from is reducing the number of youth involved in public incidents, so fights, shootings, etc, as well as decrease in public disturbances in the community. And a community could experience an effect on public safety by decreased, like I said, decreased public physical fights, youth connecting more to their immediate community, and a stronger sense of belonging in their community.

Hi. Liam Keeney, management assistant and a data specialist central grad. I'll be closing us out with some data going down the line here. First, we have household serves. Our youth tend to not be rooted in one place for long. So they can drift between neighborhood and neighborhood and represent that nuance in our data collection. We also have program participant attendance. That's the number of youth who were active participants in our program over the last quarter. Community service learning projects attendance. These are youth who participated in projects and services and sites arranged by our staff to help their communities and learn to be a part of them.

They have then have the specific services and sites they did these at. For the Ride Shack and Awakenings internship that we have across various locations, we have 50 interns currently. And then 20 participants in Awakenings are employed outside of that arrangement. And finally, we have 10 high school graduates as of this year,

2025.

Okay. I know y'all probably have questions for us, but we also brought along some youth to come and speak with you about their experience within our Awakenings program. So I will have Jessica Angel come on up. She is a part of my West Mini Group. She is 14 years old and attends Avalon High School.

Hi. Sadly, I'm not a central graduate.

You still got time. You can still make it look good. But

this was my first job, of course, and And I oh, sorry. This was my first job, and I really enjoyed it. I don't know if y'all enjoyed your first job, but for me like, this held so much memories for me. Like, the people I worked with, like, in particular her, she literally helped me through so much. Like, it's like talking to my friends at school. Like, these people are just so people. You know? Like, they're so authentic. Yeah. But I got to grow my communication skills.

I got to work with kids, and it even helped me realize that this is the type of work I wanna do in the future. I wanna be a social worker. I just wanna do all these type of things, and it just helped me like, this whole thing helped me realize that's who I wanna be, and I'm just so happy I had this opportunity and also I'm happy I got paid because

To be clear, she is talking about right track internship. They do not get paid to be a part of awakening.

But maybe they should.

Alright. I'm a call up some of my youth that was in my that's in my program. Adonis. Amazing. Then Murray's 14. Come on up. Come on up, Adonis.

And he's gonna be attending Central.

And he's gonna be attending Central. I didn't wanna throw that out there.

So I'll let them speak. I've been the goop that sent the little goop and I've been well, I learned about the little goop. You when you are mad and you are wrestling, frustrated, go to somebody to talk to you and back off. And then when I learn about the big group, you hear about trauma and how to get over trauma. And once I I had my first job, I like it and I want to work more in the future. The

next one is Amari. He's been with me for two years. He's in my older group. Come on.

Come on.

Come on,

Larry. Hello. I'm Omari. So, you know, being with the Awakenings group, at first, I didn't wanna come at all. I I pretty much begged my mom to not take me. And, you know, she was just like, you know what, Amari, you know, just, you know, give it a try. Go. And if you don't like it, you don't have to go anymore. So I was like, you know what? I'm a give it a try.

And for these past couple months that I've been in an awakenings group, it's honestly been a really good experience for me, in terms of communication because, you know, I'm a pretty shy kid, and Marcel, you know, has taught me to, you know, just communicate when you need something and, you know, just to be myself around people. And he also taught me how to cope with trauma, you know, certain things that I have going on. He taught me how to just, you know, just to cope with it and, you know, get better get better at it and to go from there in the future. And also with jobs too because I also I didn't wanna work too. I was kinda scared.

So you could kinda see where the pattern is. I was just it was just I was scared to try new things, and Marcel has taught me to, you know, always try something new. And that's something I will always take with me for, you know, the rest of my life is to always try something new. And a lot of the stuff I didn't wanna do, and I decided to give it a try, You know, it's been a great experience. And he also taught us how to be financially responsible because, you know, I had a hard time with that at one point.

So, you know, I was just spending my money. You know, I wasn't really caring about what money I had left. But now I've been saving my money and, you know, I've been saving my money for future because I'll be turning 16. So I'm gonna start looking for cars eventually. So, you know, I wanna start driving, so I've just been saving money. Also, he taught me

how

to be a critical and logical thinker. He showed me the importance of thinking logically and not thinking with your emotions because if you're always thinking with your emotions, it could you're showing other people how you act in public in a professional or a personal setting. So when when it came to him, you know, teaching me how to always think before I do something and not just act off of, like, how I feel, it really helped me in certain situations where I just told myself, you know, Amari, calm down. Don't do something you're gonna regret later on, and it's helped me. I don't know how many times. So, you know, I'm just really thankful for, you know, learning everything from Marcel. And, yeah, I like working out. So.

Najan's been with me since the start of the program. So come on up Najan, please.

Hello. My name is Najan. As he said, I've been with him since the very start of the program. When I started, I never really wanted to go. I just wanted to stay at home and watch TV all day. I still remember the first day. Marcel knows it very well. I tried out football for the first time. I got ran over by one of the other people in the program that is technically still in the program, but over the years that I've been with him, I've realized how to become more of a confident person. It's got me into a lot of things, sports, a job.

I didn't think I'd ever actually be good at sports until I actually tried it out and then I found out that I was a really good runner so I tried out for track and I was one of the best people on my team. Mhmm. You know, so that was fun. And this also got me into my first job which I didn't think I would find anything in it besides the money. But, after I started working for a while, I started realizing like I really like to do this and it's gonna be one of my passions in the future and I'm working towards being an architect now.

And, all I really thought was about the way he's been teaching us is like how to deal with trauma, cope with your past. It always helped me like in the when I was in my darkest times, it always managed to help me pull me out from there and just always keep me moving forward. And, that's really it for me.

You got time.

You have one last speaker?

We got Okay. Oh,

absolutely. Yes.

Yep. Hi. I'm Star. I'm a Arlington graduate with Marcel. He worked I met Marcel and Steve when I was back in 2000, so twenty five years ago. And these men have been like a father to me. So growing up and being mentored by them, I encourage my son and my godsons to also learn and be great men like these fellas up here, and I'm so proud and just so thankful for them to be in our life. So I just wanted to say my footwork because

I love you guys so much.

You. Thank you so much.

Can't say enough about these teams and the work that they do. Obviously, you see a personal and emotional investment in how we show up every day, but very powerful stuff. So thank you all for being here. Appreciate all of you and making this work happen. So I'll turn it back over to you.

Absolutely, well I just deeply, deeply appreciate, I think this is more than a presentation, this is just like a highlight for all the incredible work that you do. I know in the day to day even on the job the nine to five with the work that you do is not a nine to five, it's around the clock because you're truly rooted in the community. You are from the community, from the culture and and have a love for the people. So when I think about just everything that was highlighted here today, I know we are a little bit crunch of time, but I definitely want to have an opportunity for people to ask their questions, make sure that we relay those questions to you director via email, so you have adequate time to respond. But I just wanted to shortly just share that you know after hearing this presentation like I just really wish I could be a kid today it's a good Saint Paul.

And Awakenings program has such an intentionality around the overall well-being and I think about as a millennial, when I was young there wasn't enough focus around social emotional care or wellness or we even really have like the language, Our workers didn't even have the language for us to advance and grow into who we are. And I just think about this is giving them the opportunity to really like rise to the occasion of their potential and like the overall theme has been young people trying out, know, not only making connections and authentic relationships, but testing their own abilities to rise to their talents and actualizing their talents. So, investment is so important and it seems like it always multiplies when we ever we have these opportunities to hear from our young people.

So, I see that I have

a hand from council member Kim and is there also council member Joseph as well and I know we have a meeting, HRA meeting that's in one minute so. So we're gonna follow -up with Yeah.

I'll be very brief. You know, we you talk about sort of intentional interruption, but what you're also doing is very intentional cycle interruption. Some of these things for no fault of anyone's, these things are not modeled in households in the way that we would think or maybe not even modeled in the teachers that they see every single day. So if this is the place that they're getting it from, mean it's incredible. The point earlier that I was making that I just want to make sure I land is that we're in a culture that normalizes compliance or else we just get disregarded.

And I think your point earlier about how you are the constant. So, even if they go, they test that boundary and come back and you're still that person for them, it transcends your title. And I think there are staff here that understand exactly what that looks like to transcend titles. There is a woman here that just spoke just now. The time that she had spent with you and now is sending our kids to come to come find you and spend time with you.

So it is you are the connective points in our community that is creating an offering for us to heal together and in a way that feels intentional and and really really powerful. So kudos kudos to you and honestly seeing staff here that have moved from rec staff and now into this and have been around with us for for this program and for these kids like you you are the heart of this work. And so the last thought is when they came up and spoke, all of your faces were beaming with pride. Like yes to them but seeing your faces behind them is a testament to the work that you're doing. And even though you hear 120 kids, you might think that's not a lot but what you are offering them is so much more than what we could even ask of a lot of professionals in childhood development work.

So thank you so, so much. And I think the only ask I have is if someone can tell me what that acronym for GOOP is one more time. Would love to write it down. Okay.

Let's see, for the one group is able and willing to access knowledge to exceed. The other one is working on knowledge and self evaluation. Am I right, young? I'll talk to them.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. And just?

Thank you, Chair Bui. I will I just have three things I want to say really quick that stood out to me, especially about the group in front of me, just so many folks that I know we talked about being central grads, I'm a central grad too, but folks that are from the community that caring for and investing in this community and the future of our young people that just really stood out to me and that matters so much and especially from the woman who came up and talked about also knowing you all and then wanting to send her kids down that same path. Second, what I heard from our young people was just so much courage and bravery to try new things. And then all these skills that they're learning, many of which adults haven't even developed yet, but especially around their own mental health and their well-being. Skills that are going to make them really successful and wonderful adults one day.

And so I was just so impressed by that. And then lastly I'll just say that I also work as an engineer and I know I think it was Dejean, right? Was talking about wanting to be an architect. So yeah, I'd love to connect about that too because that's just so exciting all of the potential opportunities with this program.

Thank you.

Well thank you so much. I actually want to invite us all, I'm going to join this meeting and then invite us all to take a picture because I think this is an amazing opportunity for our young people and our staff here to have this moment. I'll just end with saying this, really appreciate you acknowledging transcending their titles and I think that's what makes our staff at St. Paul's so amazing because it's more than just the scope of the work, it's how we are actually reaching people's potential. For our next committee meeting, we will not have it on the fourth Wednesday for next month as we'll be having a budget meeting.

So, will be sending out emails to set a date and a time where we'll be having an off-site meeting at Rondo Library with a focus on interventions particularly on the opioid settlement dollars as well as public safety at the Rondo Library. So, this public safety business is over and we are adjoining after you can all join us for the picture with the Awakenings program and the staff and the young people as well. Okay. Thank you.

Would you

you be No. That's fine. I'm just Okay.

Would you actually be able to take the picture outside? We're gonna have

to get started with the HRE meeting. So

if you if folks wanna take the picture, that's fine.

But we are Yeah.

Fine, and we have to start it at a certain time.

Well, probably would have been easier do right there while they're right there.

No. It's a teacher. It

would've Yeah.

It's certain

Oh, I thought

it was, and then I remember asking. Yeah.