Child Welfare
Adoption Learning Partners
www.adoptionlearningpartners.org/courses/overview.cfm
Two new online courses at this site aim to educate prospective adoptive parents about a variety of child populations, including older children, children from foreign countries and children from within child welfare systems. The first course is designed to help parents consider their adoption expectations, develop integration strategies and understand the importance of a child’s history. The second covers medical issues in international adoption. The nonprofit organization offers web-based educational resources on an array of adoption issues.
Foster Youth in Transition
www.michigan.gov/fyit
Michigan’s Department of Human Services launched this new, colorful website to help foster youth make the transition to adulthood. It offers links to services and information on such issues as buying a car, dating, finding a place to live and applying to college.
Education
Thinkfinity
www.thinkfinity.org
This free online educational resource for teacher, student and community organizations provides a portal to more than 55,000 standards-based lesson plans for youth from some of the nation’s leading educational organizations. The site also offers professional development at no cost – including webinars and a field training program – with a focus on best practices for student and teacher achievement. Thinkfinity is the signature program of the Verizon Foundation’s Literacy, Education and Technology initiatives.
Juvenile Justice
The DMC Datebook
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/dmcdb
The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has added a National Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Databook to its online Statistical Briefing Book. The DMC Databook allows users to review the processes by which delinquency cases move through the juvenile justice system and examine levels of disproportionate minority contact at various decision points – a variable known as a Relative Rate Index, or RRI. The site includes national data from 1990 through 2004.
Employment/Training
You Innovate 21
www.youinnovate21.net
The result of collaboration between the National Governors Association and Scholastic, this site is aimed at getting middle school-aged youth excited about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and preparing them to become innovators. The site features standards-based content and high-definition games and activities intended to inspire young people toward STEM careers, while a career simulator focuses on the path from education to employment in more than 300 STEM-related fields.
Media/Technology
Youth OUTLOUD!
http://www.youthoutloud.net
In an effort to educate the public about youth issues, this online, cooperative syndication service offers weekly youth-generated news and feature stories based on viewpoints gathered from youth around the world. Each month, a series of questions is distributed to cooperative member organizations. Any member that submits answers from youth can run the resulting story in its own media outlet for free, while other organizations pay $50 per story. Youth reporters can join at no cost. Youth OUTLOUD! is a project of the Youth Empowerment Alliance, a worldwide network of youth-serving organizations.
