Off the Bench: Moving a Community Forward by Steve Rideout

About a year ago, I was approached by others in the community with an idea for a project to bring our community together to help improve outcomes for families here. That idea has come to be called Moving Dorchester Forward (MDF).

As our small group met and talked this past year, we gained momentum, focus, and people who were interested in joining and contributing to the effort. The data that we collected about children and families in our community and the challenges that they face made it clear that the need was here but the resources were not or were so limited that the people and non-profits trying to help were having limited impact.

We were fortunate during this time to have the J2W Foundation begin to help start the change here that needed to take place. Through its investment in developing collaborative efforts for after-school programs and funding a local Campaign for Grade Level Reading, more people in our community began to take notice.

The focus of MDF is not to provide the numerous services that are needed here but to connect those resources, find funding for service providers to implement needed services, and support existing programs through writing grants and collecting data to show their value. Another way to say it is that our aim is to turn resources into assets. With several work streams in the mission of MDF, the area of focus that I am leading as a volunteer is Advocacy, Parent/Family Engagement, and Court Involved Children. One program that we recently started is called the Coalition 4 Court Kids (C4CK).

This effort is based on a program created by the Children’s Defense Fund called “Beat the Odds.” I learned about it years ago from a judicial colleague in a neighboring community who invited me to a local awards dinner for their Beat the Odds program. The hotel room was packed with well over two hundred people from business, government, the faith community, nonprofits, youth, and family members. The purpose was both to raise money for the program and to award scholarships and grants to youth that had been involved in the juvenile court in that community and to recognize them for changing their lives with the help of programs and work with agency staff, volunteers, and engaged parents and family members.

I brought the idea back to our local bar association that took the lead and began raising money. On average they raise in the area of $30,000 each year for court involved youth college scholarships or grants to help with more education or jobs.

With a small grant this past year from the Todd Fund here in Dorchester County, MDF created the Coalition 4 Court Kids. We put together a brochure that will be printed and an application form to submit requests by youth for funding that is supported by letters from the person, nonprofit, and/or agency that works with the youth to help him or her turn their life around.

The funding is available not only for scholarships but also for purchasing computers, helping repair cars or bikes used for transportation to a job, providing money to a nonprofit that wants to hire a youth for a summer job, or whatever need the youth has that will acknowledge his or her success in changing the direction of their life and help them continue in the right direction.

If you have an interest in talking about this program or have an idea to support court involved youth or any youth for that matter, please give me a call at 703-655-6149 or email me.

Thanks for Reading. Please be in touch.

Judge Rideout is the former Chief Judge of the Alexandria, VA Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court (1989-2004). From 2004 until the present he has consulted in different states to support their efforts to improve their child welfare systems. From 2016 to early 2021, he was the Ward 1 Commissioner on the Cambridge City Council. Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for improving the lives of children in his and other communities.

Steve can be reached at [email protected]