UPDATE: Urban Youth Sports was awarded the Robert Wood Johnson 2000 Grant.

SEE COVERAGE HERE!

NOTE: This information was released prior to the announcement of the award

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From 326 to 20...
Sport in Society's Urban Youth Sports program was recently distinguished as a finalist for the coveted Robert Wood Johnson 2000 Local Initiative funding partners program.

Urban Youth Sports was anounced as a finalist after a pool of 326 programs applied for the prestigious grant. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which supported the initial Boston Youth Sports Congress which gave birth to the UYS Program, narrowed down the 326 programs to 29 finalists of which UYS was proud to have been included with. The RWJ Foundation will then select 20 worthy programs to receive the funding award.

The official anouncement will be made in late July, 2000.

Site Vist
Urban Youth Sports became a finalist based in large part on collaborations with dozens of community based/oriented organizations. The importance of these collaborations was highlighted in recent site-visits from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ).

Representatives from the RWJ Foundation visited Urban Youth Sports at the Sport in Society offices in Boston, MA. The site visit included a meeting with the group who developed the funding nomination proposal, the UYS Steering Committee.

The breakfast meeting included (now former) Sport in Society COO Jose Masso, (now former) UYS Co-Directors Art Taylor and (current Director) Kevin Fitzgerald, UYS Program Specialist Linda Keefe, UYS Project Coordinator Stephen Burke, and Sylvia Stevens-Edouard, Community Relations Director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

UYS then coordinated meetings for the representatives with the Brookside Community Health Center and Director Paula McNichols, and the Mattapan Community Health Center and Director Dr. Azzie Young.

UYS then brought in members from the Mattapan and Jamaica Plain sports community.

They then met with matching funding partners James Hunt, Director of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers and Sylvia Stevens-Edouard from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

A luncheon meeting brought together institutional collaborators from the community and public agencies.
This distinguished group included:

Finally the representatives met with the fiscal managers Stephen Gould, Richard McNeil, Greg O'Brien, and Art Taylor.

Urban Youth Sports Health Connection
The projected Urban Youth Sports Health Connection is made possible because of the generous current and pledged support from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers serving as matching funding partners. The UYS Health Connection is designed to increase physical activity in urban children and access to appropriate health care. This will include sports physicals developed by Children's Hospital, prescriptions for specific sports or other physical activities given to children and their parents, and critical life skill training presented to coaches and players.

Harvard Prevention Research Center
UYS is also a proud partner of the Harvard Prevention Research Center funded by a multi-year grant from CDC to conduct a needs assessment of opportunities for children and youth in Boston to engage in physical activity. There must be excellent cooperation with youth sports providers, educators and other community leaders for this needs assessment to fully succeed. To insure this, Urban Youth Sports has been fortunate enough to hire a proven leader, Alfreda Harris, to work on a part-time basis with Linda Keefe on this project. Sport in Society is one of the partners that has helped make the City of Boston a finalist for a very large Robert Wood Johnson grant to develop a comprehensive after-school program that reaches the majority of the children.

NOTE: This Initiative developed into the Play Across Boston program.

UYS brings sport and physical activity expertise to this collaboration, as well as possibly increasing the presence of Sport in Society's two outstanding violence prevention programs, Project TEAMWORK and Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program, to Boston's after-school programs.

Northeastern University's
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SPORT IN SOCIETY
360 Huntington Avenue, Suite 161 CP
Boston, MA 02115-5000
Phone: (617) 373-4025
Fax: (617) 373-4566

E-MAIL US at [email protected]