Edventure will act as a backbone collective impact organization in a two year community-centered effort to identify local assets, bring together a unique cross-section of city stakeholders, and…

Edventure will act as a backbone collective impact organization in a two year community-centered effort to identify local assets, bring together a unique cross-section of city stakeholders, and develop a locally-driven plan that addresses the pressing and interrelated issues of youth development and gang activity in hartsville. As part of its growing relationship with the city of hartsville, south carolina, the project team hopes to successfully implement a social impact model to design a collective youth development and anti-gang strategy in hartsville and a plan for youth development and anti-gang programs that embraces collective impact approaches, including collectively derived data, outcomes, and reporting. This initiative would also uniquely involve youth themselves: while supporting the workgroup, edventure will simultaneously lead its future leaders after school program at hartsville middle school and include the participants" voices in the development of the collective impact plan. Edventure will be using the U.S. Department of justice's office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention (ojjdp) comprehensive gang model - a cross-sector and tiered-work model of action that, like a collective impact framework, utilizes a central leadership group and mutual goals to address youth gang activity. Edventure's participation in this effort underscores the important role libraries and museums - especially those in rural towns - can play in bringing together diverse community leaders and organizations to define collective goals and develop mutual strategies around key community issues, especially those involving children and families.