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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host, Dana Rico and Gina Lash. Hello, I'm dana D'Errico. And this is Sonoma County. In the nineties, Sonoma County has a formal teen recognition program and it is sponsored by the County of Sonoma and the director is Ellen

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draper of that program and uh an assistant is Nancy Root who is an assistant with the program. How are you today? Thank you. I'm great. Tell me about yourself Nancy. My name is Nancy Root and I'm 17 and I attend Santa Rosa High School and I

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enjoy hobbies such as volleyball track and field and I volunteer a lot through community activities. How did you get involved in this program? I was nominated and I was a recipient of the friday night Live award about two or three years ago and I just remained

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active in the club and I helped, I helped select the recipients for this year's friday night Live. I see. And alan, can you tell me about yourself? Well I am the coordinator for the friday night live program for Sonoma County and have been doing that job

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for the past 11 years for the County of Sonoma and I currently work for the department of health services in the prevention division. Okay, what is the team recognition event. It is an event that was designed by a group of teenagers. 10 years ago we just

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had our ninth annual team recognition event on May three. And it came out of the fact that the kids felt that there needed to be a more expanded vehicle for kids to get recognized when they're making a difference in their community. What they noticed is that

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most of the kids that get recognized get that happens because of grades and or athletics and they felt that you know there's an awful lot of young people out there that are you know B. Or C average students maybe they've dropped out of school um And

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they're working on their G. E. D. Or they just have really had a lot of challenges in their lives and yet they're doing things that really contribute to the E. U. To the betterment of the community and make a difference and yet there really was no

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way for them to be recognized for doing that. So they designed this event. So are these these teens are not necessarily in high school, they are just. What is the age limit for this program? 13-1913-19 and you could be virtually doing anything if you were in

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the age bracket between 13 and nine. Not necessarily a high school student correct. I didn't realize that. That's fantastic. Um do you think that this is really helpful for young adults to motivate them? How do you find these young adults? Well, we send out nomination forms

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all over the county. Our nomination are our mailing list is up to about 3-4,000 names and organizations throughout the county. And in the fall we send out nomination forms to schools to community groups to, I mean just about anybody that might be working with youth in

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a variety of ways and we encourage the community to nominate kids that they a C is making a difference. The categories are serviced appears service to community or being outstanding role models in one way or another. Grades and sports are not criteria unless they are significant

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in the big picture. So if the only thing that, and I don't I don't mean to make it sound like grades and sports are not important. They are simply that this award was designed as a way to expand the opportunities for kids to get recognized. So

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um if we get nominations for young people and that it is only talking about their grades and sports, they're not gonna really be considered for this award because that's not what we're looking for. If they have grades and sports on top of the fact that they

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have had to overcome some immense challenges. And it is significant. For example, someone who's dropped out of school because of alcohol or drug abuse or because they became a teen mother and they went back to school to get their diploma. That and you know, they're carrying

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AIDS and bees. That is significant because they have, they've overcome a challenge in order to attain that kind of a grade point average? I think that that is fantastic to have something like that where anyone can participate. If you just meet that age criteria, There are

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several events Ellen that take place in Sonoma County. Um, 14 recognition program in the program. Uh, tell me about them. The, the annual Friday night, Right. That's the event that we just got through with. That's our annual event is the Friday night live team recognition event

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and we recognize 25 teenagers for either being serviced appears service to community or outstanding role models. And what makes this unique over all of the other teen recognition events that I'm personally familiar with and that doesn't mean I'm familiar with all of them by any stretch

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of the imagine nation. Is that this one does not focus on grades and athletics unless it's significant in the big picture. What is club Live? Is that the same thing? Well, Club Live is friday night Live is a program that works with teenagers and club live

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works with junior high age students. Whereas friday night Live works with high school age students. So that's the program. The team recognition event is a project of that program. I see nancy. How often does this event occur? This event occurs once a year is an annual

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event but preparing it and carrying it out takes a lot longer than just one night. How much time goes into it Do you think Allen puts a lot of time into it? She does. The majority of the work it would take probably takes nine months, nine

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months to put this together for just one night. Where where does this take place the event this year? It was at the Petaluma Community Center when I was recognized, it was at the Villa chanticleer. It changes every year. So at some location hall or right, we

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moved it around the county, we'll stay someplace for two, maybe three years and then move it to another part of the county Ellen. What makes it different from other recognition forums for teens? Well, as I stated earlier, it does not focus on grades and sports as

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criteria for selection. The other part that is unique about it is that we recognize 25 teenagers equally. We don't pick just one or two or five or 10 that stand out above the rest because they all stand out. And in fact this the kids that we

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recognize are truly the tip of the iceberg. I mean we got 100 and 90 nominations this year and could only recognize 25 I'll tell you if you had a chance to read the rest of the nominations, you'd know that we could easily recognize 50 75 kids.

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I mean there are just some phenomenal kids doing incredible things out there. I think that this is great that there's some forum where they can be recognized so often. We only hear about the things that are negative and there really are a lot of good things

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that are happening. Absolutely. In fact, that was another element to why the kids designed this event was that they wanted something that would help to educate the community, that there are a lot of good kids out there doing things that make a difference and try and

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counteract the, the general attitude that seems to exist that kids are nothing but troublemakers and you know, and when you just recognize one or two kids a year and the other part of it is that when you take a look at grades and sports, what you'll

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notice is that it typically is the cream of the crop. You have the same kids that get recognized over and over and over again, they get all of the awards, all of the scholarships and that's not to belittle them because they work very hard for that.

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But again, the idea is how can you expand and broaden the opportunity for kids to be recognized when they're doing things well to take other young adults and recognize them for their outstanding attributes rather than just grades a good athlete and those are important. But, but

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it is the cream of the crop, there's a lot of other kids out there doing good things. How did it get started Beyond the fact that you pointed out that it's only athletics and grades seem to be the students or young adults that are recognized. Was

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there any other reason that it got started? Well again, it goes back to uh 10 years ago I worked with students have worked with student action groups on campuses around the county around alcohol and other drug prevention work. And every year that I've worked with kids,

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I'll always ask them what's missing and what can we do to try and address that need? And so 10 years ago, what came up from working with students around the county was the fact that there wasn't anything that recognized those students that are, you know get

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B's and C's are total klutzes on the football field and yet they're out there doing incredible amounts of community service and you know, they just said there's nothing for us to recognize us and the community doesn't know that we're out there doing all this good stuff

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and they need to know that there's a lot of us out there and we're not all bad apples. What's involved in the annual event? Tell me about the event. What happens if you go to the petaluma hall or santa clair at that event? Do you want

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to do that with nancy? A lot of nerves, there are running, um, they come to the office, the restaurant and they sit down with their family members, the people who nominated them, there's dinner, there's dessert and then um, Allen starts to speak and she tells the

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history of the event and every one of the 25 students are recognized. Their told the audience is told a little bit about their background, why they were recognized. And then they come up, they get a nice plaque and you get a lot of things from the

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government. They are also involved in this recognizing that that's very nice. Little certificates, signed documents, those kind of things. And I mean I left the event very happy, very proud of myself for being able to, you know, achieve this kind of goal. It was very exciting.

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That's great. How are the teams selected nancy? That's the fun part, that's the fun part, a student or to like me and an adult adult representative. We read through all of the applications that we, the friday night live office received this year. As one said it

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was 100 and 90 that we received. We read through every single one of those applications and we rank them According to one through four. Seeing the community service. They do. Um, they're great and sports were only looked upon if they were carrying a whole heavy load

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on. In addition to that. Um, and we rank them one through four on those specific categories. We averaged the scores and the top ones were selected. We had to read through them more than once before. We could decide which 25 really deserved even though all of

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them, a lot of them were really wonderful. Did you find that difficult? It was hard. It took a whole saturday. We just sat there in the office and just read through them. It was very hard because so many teens deserve to be recognized and it would

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be great to nominate, you know, to show all of them, but we just can't. It was very hard. And who is helping you in this election? You and Ronnie Graham who works with Exchange Exchange Bank and Omar Medina who was a student at Elsie Allen High

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School and was also recognized for this event the same year that I was. And those were your assistant. Those were the three of us. Typically we have four past recipients and one token adult that go through all the nomination forms and we were only able to

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pull together to past recipients this year. Well we need to take a brief pause right now. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Good Right now. In some school districts, third graders are learning how to solve this equation. and in some school districts, 6th graders are learning,

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but there are still some school districts where seniors will receive a diploma without ever having to face the question, insist on high academic standards. Welcome back to Sonoma County. In the nineties, I'm dana D'Errico and I'm here with Ellen draper Director of the team recognition program

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and with nancy route student from santa rosa high school. We were just talking about how the teams were selected. I read through some of the letters or their synopsis of each team. I was amazed at some of these fantastic things that these teams are doing out

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there. Do you want to elaborate on that? And tell us a little bit about some of the things that that they are doing. I mean some of them are doing outstanding things. They're going to Mexico and volunteering their summer building houses. I just, Yeah, there's just

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a lot of kids. I mean we have one young lady and jump in Nancy because you read through all those forms a lot more than I did have one young lady who signs for the developmentally disabled at mass on Sundays and and she's 13. She's already

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been doing that for two years every single Sunday she goes and and helps them to go from their transportation into the chapel and then signs and sings during the service. And um and she was recognized for that and the fact that she's able to just be

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with these people who most people have a difficult time being around. And um we have a young man who has been for most of his life been fixing and repairing bikes and trikes and wagons that are then handed out to families, low income families during the

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holiday season and one young lady who makes quilts for AIDS babies and we'll go into the shelter and make especially sewn Halloween and easter dresses for little girls. And I mean I read that one is very touched, she made Halloween costumes and easter easter dresses. I

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mean it's just just that's just the the kids are just the tip of the iceberg. Um There was one that really touched me and she was visiting this elderly lady just because the lady wanted her to visit her and she's 100 year old woman raised a

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family in china. Yes and she said she liked to go and visit with her and talk about china and what what her life had been And I thought my goodness if that isn't really phenomenal for a young team which clearly is not directed at academic grades,

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but more compassion aspect of caring for the community and that's what we look for is how they get themselves out there and involved with the community and just sitting at home watching tv and soap operas. That's not what we're looking for. Looking for people who actually

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get out involved in care about the community, the people who actually do other things observe. Um Ellen, if I want to nominate 18 for this recognition award, how would I do that or how would our guests viewing today? How would they be able to do that?

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Well at this particular point in time because we just did the event, their best bet would be to contact me and give me their name and mailing address so that when we send out the nomination forms next fall, then they will automatically get a nomination form

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that they can fill out and send back into it, you know, send it back into me and then it will go into the pile for consideration. Um you would want the name of the student, the person who wants to do the nominating would give us their

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name and phone number or mailing address is fine. Uh and we will mail them the nomination form that they will then fill out for the teen or teams of their choice. They have to write some information and the more they write, the better it is for

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the selection committee. So they should elaborate why they think that this team is a candidate for the and the form gives the questions that we're looking for answers to for each person and it's just a matter of them filling out those questions. Okay, um what is

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next for this event, Ellen? Well, next year will be the 10th year that we'll be doing this event. So that's a significant milestone. What I'm in the process of doing is I and I started this last year is developing an alumni group of past recipients that

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will become more involved in putting this event on so that there's more ownership by them to continue the process of recognizing their peers as time goes on. It's a lot of work and I don't mind doing it and the whole philosophy of friday night live is

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to empower young people to take ownership of things. So that's the reason why we've had past recipients that sit on the selection committee. The other reason for past recipients sitting on the selection committee and forming, forming the bulk of it is that they have a better

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understanding of what it takes to balance all of those different things that they read about. Whereas adults tend to look at what kids are doing through their own filter of experience they may look at and think, Oh, that's nothing because they do so much more. But

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they're also, you know, 15 2030 years older too. So we really need the perspective of a young person to say, I know that would take a lot to pull that off. Uh, so anyways, we're developing the alumni group to take on more ownership of the event.

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We also are going to be looking for more sponsors to help underwrite the event just because there have been budget cuts in the county and the funds that I have available to continue this event are no longer there. So we'll be looking to develop more of

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a public private partnership and putting this event on in the future. And then eventually we'd like to get to the point where we are able to recognize 50 teens in a year because that was the, that was the primary vision of this group of kids was

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that we start with 25, but we get to the point where we could eventually recognize 50 kids which would require two different different events. There's no way we could do 50 in one night without people falling asleep. So I guess this ties into the missing pieces

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that you talked about earlier the earlier, before the show, the missing pieces. You're looking for more sponsors from the community businesses and individuals. I've already had two individuals that have stepped forward interested in being, helping to sponsor the event, what what is needed for their sponsorship

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funds. Well, it's a primarily, it is cash because that's what we used to pay for things like the award, you know, the plaques that the kids get and the dinner and we underwrite the dinner for the kids and that sort of thing. But there are areas

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in which people could provide in kind support. We have steve smith of Decker studio in Petaluma has been providing his services as a professional photographer to do black and white portraits of the kids. This is I think his third or fourth year and they're absolutely beautiful

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and he does that all as a donation. So it's not necessarily just funds, you would also, you can use different things that are required to put on the event to help you get to attain your goal and you'd like to do 50 to 75 well 50

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I think would be the next step just because we've been doing 25. And And like I said the the original vision of the kids was to eventually get to the point where we could recognize 50 every year when you go through and look at the teams

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that you are going to select and you're going through 190 applications. What do you look for? Is there a criteria that you follow nancy? Is there something that you look for above others? Is there a rating system there is it's what I talked about earlier we

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read through the applications we asked we asked that the nominators describe what makes this team special, why they should be nominated through community service through um Overcoming goals you know things like that. Um We rate them on their you know community service. Um You know if

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they do a lot of community service to nursing homes or working through young Children things like that. Overcoming goals as being like a teen mother and still accomplishing school and getting your G. E. D. Or graduating high school, things like that. We look for special kids

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that aren't I'm good at sports you know I can play football you know things like that. Um And grades so many kids are nominated are already recognized through their good grades and we only look through at sports and grades if they are significant in the whole

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big picture as alan said you know if they can they can handle grade sports and community activities and goals, things like that, so that that's basically what, that's the criteria that you would use. I think that's great that you do that. Um why do you think

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that teens should be recognized like this because they are special. They, I mean you can hear it from your parents or you do such a good job, you know, you're a great kid here from your teachers, you know, you do such great work, you know, you're

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an A plus student. I think through the community being recognized, saying the community is is telling you that you're doing a good job for them is very special. I know I was very proud when I received the award and saying that the community is happy of

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what I'm doing. You know, they're saying that a team can do a great job and that's what is really important that students realize that the good work they're doing is contributing somehow is making the community happy and is showing that they are a good person. So

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you feel that the community recognition beyond the teacher, the parent is really the real high for a team. How did this being recognized for you as a outstanding teenager in the community? How did that change your life? I think it changed my life considerably. I realized

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that I can do what I want to do, I can get out there and you know, do the community service. I am a girl Scout and I do a lot of community service through that helping young Children. I realized that what I was doing made a

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difference and that I wasn't just you know, a little person nobody saw, nobody knew about and that's what made it nice for me, is that my work was making a difference and that you were recognized for that effort, that you, what did you do, you, it

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sounds like you, I received the award for service to the community, so um that was service to community. What did you do to receive the word for services, community, Exactly, Did you go to a daycare center and actually out through Girl Scouts, doing community service, participating

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in the Sonoma county races, you know, snoopy race, things like that. Volunteering at community events involved with Nordquist ballroom dancing as a junior instructor, helping young Children to learn to ballroom dance. I, you know, it's just a lot of things through honor society and junior high,

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I was in junior high at the time um and through the honor society and um things like that, it was just a lot of school activity and community activity, Ellen, how do you think that this program has changed our community and what impact has it had

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on our community for the better? Oh God, yeah, that's a big question, I would like to think that it has had an influence on the community in the sense that people are becoming more conscious of the fact that most kids out there. The vast majority of

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the kids out there are really good kids and that, you know, like with adults and it's the same way with kids. You have a few bad apples and unfortunately the few bad apples in the teenage area tend to really spoil the whole barrel in terms of

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attitude adults have about kids. And so I'd like to think that this event because of the portrait displays that we do around at santa rosa plaza and cutting town and other areas that people are becoming aware that that kids aren't all bad and actually they're doing

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some pretty phenomenal stuff out there. I I also would like to think that people are looking more at kids because it's an annual event. We send these nomination forms. Part of the idea behind it is to help uncover the invisible kids. And so I'd like to

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think that people are becoming more aware and more conscious of those invisible kids and that it has an impact on the fact that they're looking year round rather than just for a couple of days. Well, I thank both of you. I think our time's about up.

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I think you're doing a fantastic job and thank goodness we have people like you in our community. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining me. I hope you enjoyed the show. We'll be back in two weeks with some more interesting and outstanding programs that Sonoma

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County has to offer. I'm dana to rico. And this is Sonoma County in the nineties. Goodnight. All right. Yeah.