Voices from the Field: Laurie Jackson

Date: 10/18/2010 | Time: 4:02 | Size: 2.6 MB

Laurie Jackson, the new executive director of National Safe Place, discusses her plans to carry the organization’s mission forward.

NCFY:  Seen in the window of a fire station, fast food restaurant or bus, the yellow Safe Place logo symbolizes a community's efforts to offer safe haven and services to young people in crisis.  Through an agreement with the National Runaway Switchboard, National Safe Place helps the Family and Youth Services Bureau prevent and address youth homelessness around the country.  In July, Laurie Jackson left a FYSB funded youth shelter in Kansas City, Missouri to become Safe Place's Executive Director.  She spoke with us about her new organization and her vision for its future. 

MS. LAURIE JACKSON:  Really, Safe Place is about public/private partnerships of sites across the country that provide access to immediate help for young people in crisis.  My vision for Safe Place really is just to continue the great work that's been established by the folks who have come before me, to continue to grow the organization.

So instead of 16,000 Safe Place individual sites and 137 agencies, we're able to double, triple, quadruple that.  So that young people truly across the country, and perhaps even outside the country, have sites to go to or have access to that assistance.  It's really continuing to build on what we've begun to do. 

NCFY:  We asked Jackson how local youth serving groups can benefit from national networks.

MS. LAURIE JACKSON:  I think that national networks provide a vital service to local agencies.  Local agencies are able to create buzz in their communities and understand the need in their community.  Regional and national organizations are able to take all of those stories and help the country understand that this is not just an issue that happens in Seattle or in New York or in Kansas City. 

This is an overarching issue across the country.  And we as citizens of this country need to pay attention to it and provide assistance for these young people and for these families that are struggling.  So we're able to do that.  We're also able to provide some advocacy level in Washington as well as across the country.  We're able to bridge organizations. 

So what's going on in California and working well?  And can that transplant to Kansas City?  Or to Louisville?  Or to another site?  We're able to connect folks together like that, and to provide shared training and bring folks together and talk about evidence-based work.  And why that’s important.

NCFY:  Like FYSB, National Safe Place promotes positive youth development, the idea that all youth can grow up to make positive contributions to their families, schools and communities if given guidance and support from caring adults. 

MS. LAURIE JACKSON:  National Safe Place is all about youth development.  It's about assisting young people in growing and developing.  We are looking at doing some work around adolescent brain development and a couple of pilot projects to help young people understand, you know, kind of where they are with adolescent brain development and how that translates into the decisions that they make sometimes and be able to change what the outcome might have been or what their decision might have been. 

And it's a very core thing that certainly speaks to youth development.  But it's also about getting young people involved in Safe Place communities across the country, not only providing Safe Place sites, but in sharing the information and helping other young people not only grow, but provide service projects or give back to those local agencies in their community.  So at the very core, we are certainly about youth development. 

NCFY:  For information about existing Safe Place programs and how to start one in your community, go to nationalsafeplace.org.

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