https://youtu.be/AdHsLrBxjoI At Citizen University, both teens and adults are deeply involved in strengthening civic culture. But when all ages met, both young and older were a bit uneasy. They wondered how they could best work together. How could they tap the talents...
Purpose Prize
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5 Ways to Make Your Collaboration with Teens a Success
Our task, as we understood it, was to get teen leaders involved in Citizen University’s Youth Collaboratory excited about working alongside adults to create change — what we call cogeneration. As it turns out, teens in the program were already excited about...
Want to Jumpstart a Conversation About Collaborating With Teens?
When CoGenerate and Citizen University launched a project to deepen cogenerational ties, our goal was to get teens excited about working alongside older adults to create change. What we discovered surprised us. Teens didn’t need convincing to work across generations....
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Bobbe J. Bridge
Purpose Prize Fellow 2012
A former judge, Bridge brings stability to the lives of youths in Washington’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems, through innovative programs.
Bobbe J. Bridge, who served for two decades as a judge in Washington’s juvenile, superior and State Supreme Court systems, never forgot the troubled youths who had come before her bench in the early years.
They often were foster kids with mental health issues who had been removed from abusive, neglectful homes. About 20 percent had been homeless. A disproportionate number were children of color.
“As a judge, I felt helpless and hopeless to make a difference,” Bridge says.
So in 2006, at age 61, Bridge retired to found the Seattle-based Center for Children & Youth Justice. Partnering with agencies and advocates, the center has developed a battery of programs for at-risk youths in the foster care and juvenile justice systems, including free legal help and mental health services.
Children in those programs have a better shot at better lives. For instance, those in the infant-oriented Supporting Early Connections program, which ran from 2008 to 2011, were reunited with their parents or adopted within 18 months – six months sooner than the state average.
Bridge now hopes to replicate the Center for Children & Youth Justice’s success nationwide. In the past six years she’s crisscrossed the country to share the organization’s insights and experiences. She says, “I have never been so personally or professionally fulfilled.”