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ELEMENT 2: PROJECT BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY Describe how this project was identified as a need, how it relates to your library's strategic plan, what will be accomplished if this project is implemented, and how you will know whether your project is successful. Summary should relate to activities in the timeline (Element 4) and include statistical information to support the project. The Santa Ana Public Library's TeenSpace has always been a refuge for marginalized youth. Since its inception in 2009, it has welcomed and sheltered teens and young adults experiencing the results of the cultural, economic, educational, and situational challenges endemic to an urban immigrant community. They have grown up in a built out environment suffering from high population density, limited green space and an expanding and very present homeless population. They face daily the effects of poverty and poor diet on health and hope. The statistics are daunting. Santa Ana's population is 78% Latino and 11% Asian. 71% speak Spanish and 9.7% speak an Asian language at home. 45% are foreign born. 31% fall below the poverty line, and the median income for those 25 and over is just over $24,000 per year. Engaging youth through its Circle of Mentoring Program, the Library has been successful in drawing marginalized youth into the program and retaining them through their growing years. The Library's effective commitment to these youth and their concerns was recognized by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which awarded the program the 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award. The City's Strategic Plan has recognized the importance of these problems by providing the Library with a central role in its Youth Civic Engagement five year Strategic Plan. It has enabled the Library to employ Youth Civic Engagement Interns, who are tasked both with developing their own commitment to civic engagement, and reaching out to the City's youth to engage them. They have had remarkable success. In 2016, they developed and hosted a Youth Services Provider Summit, which offered nearly 100 workers in service to Santa Ana youth an opportunity to learn from a nationally recognized expert how to cultivate resilience in youth. Both the Library and the providers recognize that resilience is essential to children growing up among such challenges. Many of these providers will be partners in this project. The YCE's have revitalized the City's moribund Youth Commission, and supported its operation for over two years, recruiting members and insuring funding for Commission projects. The Youth Commission is charged with bringing youth concerns and innovations to the attention of the City Council, and is an essential youth voice in the community. The Youth Commission will be actively promoting and outreaching for the Youth Know project as part of their #1 Love Santa Ana initiative. The Youth Know program will utilize these experienced Youth Civic Engagement Interns to mentor and guide teen/young adult volunteers in the development of the skills required to find out about issues of interest, analyze that information, develop possible paths to improvement/mitigation, and promote their ideas to the community and support sources. The Youth Know program will employ Tutor Mentors to focus on developing youth skills in the following areas: 1)Research, 2.)Writing, 3.) Communications and Public Speaking and 4.) Video Production. This will begin in a Summer Engagement Academy. The Academy will repeat in January and April, to involve as many teens as possible. In the fall, eight intems selected from the summer academy participants will be employed as Youth Know Interns and will steer new volunteers in guiding young children in reading and writing about social issues, and will host a series of bilingual computer workshops teaching adults how to contact their representatives, evaluate online information sources and communicate using social media. In the spring an additional four Youth Know interns will be hired from the January cohort to implement the same program with a new group of participants. From April -August all intents along with 30 youth volunteers/participants will engage in a Youth Know Social Innovation Academy. The Innovation Academy will incorporate new elements leading to a culminating event in August 2018. This session will take the teens into action, learning about the four targeted areas of the project: homelessness, food insecurity, community sustainability, and health, and using that knowledge to design community-based social innovations for the targeted areas. They will receive instruction in grant writing to fund their innovations, and present them at the culminating Youth Know Social Innovation Unconference and Fair. At the culmination of this project, 292 Youth, 120 Pre -K and elementary age little Buddies, 60 Adult Computer learners, and 40 Community Stakeholders will have participated in high impact civic engagement activities that will provide the necessary catalyst for civic engagement in their community. Additionally we project that over 1000 additional folks will be reached and inspired towards civic engagement by project via CTV3 PSA's and Website. If successful, the Youth Know academy will be sustained albeit in a limited capacity as part of the city's Youth Civic Engagement strategic initiative. The long-term impact of the Youth Know project will be determined when successful outcomes are produced from strategies and interventions designed during the project are implemented in the community of Santa Ana to alleviate the stropples ofhomelessness_ health. food insecurity and community sustainability. 2 EXHIBIT 2 55A-6