Active Balanced Community is a Building Restorative Communities (BRC) initiative. Year one of BRC was a unique, year long, county wide strategic planning effort to extend the Balanced And Restorative Justice (BARJ) philosophy throughout the community to make a positive difference in the lives of youth and families in the county. We created a five year plan to address youth and families in Monroe County Michigan. This plan was based on the following principles:


    

  •  Strengthen the family 

  •  Support core social institutions 

  •  Balance prevention and intervention 

  •  Intervene with graduated sanctions 

  •  Repair harm to victims and communities 

  •  Engage the community 

  •  Foster responsibility




For a list of the community agencies invloved in planning and implementation, please visit our Community Partners page.



We had five workgroups:

Juvenile Justice Analysis

Resource Assessment

Outreach/Communication/Media

Youth

Data Collection



We also had a steering committee - the board of directors if you will for the project.  This committee was made up of community leaders and juvenile justice system representatives.



The role of the Steering Committee in real simple terms was:


    

  1.  Take the information from the workgroups and build a 5-year plan that will address the needs of youth and family in our county
    
Goal: Make a positive difference in the lives of youth and families.

  2.  Determine where local, state and even federal policies need to be changed to address our needs and move toward change
    
Goal: Community built and supported programs and services for youth and families that allow our kids to become productive adults.




Monroe County Demographics

Click here to access the SEMCOG web site

Once you are on the SEMCOG web site, scroll down, select Monroe County from the menu and then click on the “Create a Profile” button.



Talking Points for the Active Balanced Community Initiative.

These could be useful for our fellow Active Balanced Community members who wish to talk about our work with other members of the community.


Talking Points Adobe Acrobat





Do you have questions about Active Balanced Community or are you interested in getting involved? Please contact us.




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Sandie Pierce and April Corie - Development Co-Coordinators • 216 N. Monroe Street • Monroe, MI 48162 • Phone: 734 242-1331 x 13 • Fax: 734-242-3378 • e-mail: info@activebalancedcommunity.org