Woodbury Youth Resource Connection: Getting Kids Involved in the Community

The Woodbury Community Foundation’s youth initiative will continue to look at ways to help the city’s youngsters following the establishment of its Woodbury Youth Resource Connection.

The Woodbury Youth Resource Connection (WYRC) is an online database that provides resources from several groups in the city, from youth athletic associations to the Scouts and YMCA.

The idea is to have the organizations work collectively to give kids in Woodbury a one-stop shop for activities, jobs and volunteer opportunities, said Mark Cavaleri, a Woodbury Community Foundation Board member who is heading up the youth initiative.

“They’ve done an extraordinarily fine job,” he said.

The youth effort is one of four areas of focus for the Woodbury Community Foundation, the others being jobs, food and housing.

Now, a new committee that met in July is looking at other ways to serve youth.

“Are there gaps or some level of urgency?” Cavaleri said. “What are things that we can look at and pull those organizations together?”

The group includes Public Safety Chief Lee Vague, Michelle Witte of the Arts Connection, East Ridge Principal Aaron Harper and Richard Jenkins of the Minnesota Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Future endeavors may include youth leadership development or having 12- to 15-year-olds establish their own “supervised but unstructured” activities under which they could control and organize the events, Cavaleri said.

Nothing beyond the Woodbury Youth Resource Connection has been set, and at this point the group is brainstorming other ways to get kids involved in the community, he said.

Several programs are available for kids in Woodbury, Cavaleri said, noting high school programs such as Key Club, the YMCA’s Model UN and Scouts’ Eagle and Gold awards. It’s just a matter of promoting those options and putting them together in one place.

“There’s a lot out there,” he said. “I’m really excited about it.”

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