Independent Living Services in Need for a Change
Morgan Byram
Norman Oklahoma's Independent Living Services for the Youth program, (ILSY) created in the early 1900s strives to "empower high school students in family crisis to pursue education without obstacles," as acknowledged by their mission statement. ILSY is funded by rental income, grants, donations, and United Way of Norman. ILSY provides services for around 110 students per year, and houses 20 students per semester.
Team Purple has conducted research and analyzed current data on independent living services throughout the United States and looked into organizations like ILSY in the Oklahoma community. Many current independent living services throughout the U.S., focus more on disabled or juvenile delinquent youth. There is not a lot of websites or articles that directly pertain to the ILSY organization. We found from online resources, the homeless population of teens is often overlooked. One program, the CHRIS Kids organization focused on foster care and juvenile systems, but did provide supervised housing like ILSY currently does. Another program found in the area is, The University of Oklahoma National Resource Center for Youth Services works with the Oklahoma Department for Human Services, Children and Family Division providing assistance to youth, foster parents, and also child welfare workers. The program works to promote planning of youth's future, but does not have the same offerings as ILSY. From our background research we came to a consensus of the increased need for awareness of youth services. Many of the organizations are not highly recognized because of their security issues and also attitudes and behavior of the community towards independent living youth organizations.
We received a triangulation of data by performing an observation, survey and a focus group of our internal publics of the ILSY organization: alumni, students, board members, staff and volunteers. We found the need for a new name allowing ILSY to be acknowledged more in the surrounding area. From our survey we found the need for a catchy name that did not necessarily state what the organization was in the name. We also held a focus group with our internal publics, and received similar results and name suggestions for the organization.
Team Purple wants to increase the overall awareness of the current ILSY organization and help the organization obtain a new name. We want to promote a positive image and create excitement and optimistic attitudes internally throughout the organization on the new changes being made. From our research, I feel certain that a new name will help ILSY grow into one of the top independent living services in the community. The increase in awareness at the end of our campaign will generate an increase in volunteers and donation and hep gain positive news in the media. Awareness events I feel are a key element to a successful business.
Independent Living Services-http://www.indliving.org
CHS- Corporation for Supportive Housing - http://www.chs.org
CHRIS Kids- http://www.chriskids.org/programsilp.html
OAYS- http://www.oays.org
Morgan Byram
No comments:
Post a Comment