Organizers of It’s About Time…for Kids!! say it’s about time for Bainbridge to re-open the conversation about – and with – its children.

“I have a picture in my mind of how things could be,” coordinator Geoff Ball said. “You’ll stand on the curb, and everywhere you’ll see adults cross the street to talk to young people.”

Through events like an all-day community training session slated for Dec. 12, Ball and IATFK hope to make that vision – a community that universally supports youth – a reality.

The goal seems much closer than it did four years ago.

In 1997, the school district decided to assess grades six through 12 for “developmental assets” – attributes identified by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute as protecting kids from risky behaviors.

At the same time, a group of youth advocates led by health researcher Kathryn Horsley came together to form a local initiative for youth based on that assets philosophy.

The group, which included Rick Jackson, Bainbridge Youth Services director Connie Mueller and other community leaders, wanted to turn conventional wisdom about youth on its head. Rather than looking for the problems young people exhibit, IATFK sought to identify what worked to protect kids from risky behavior and tries to increase those assets.

What they and the district’s study discovered was that Bainbridge youth were “asset-poor.”

Of 40 possible attributes ranging from “external” assets such as youth programs to “internal” ones like self-esteem, Bainbridge youth averaged 19.

Eighty percent said they did not feel valued by the community.

BHS junior and IATFK volunteer Courtney Smith has seen this feeling of alienation.

“When teens are viewed as potential shoplifters or graveyard desecrators – when they are seen as perpetrators – then teens are quick to be defensive in the presence of adults,” she said.

Horsley’s group set out to change Bainbridge attitudes and actions regarding island youth, and instill the developmental assets philosophy Bainbridge-wide.

In addition to workshops and roundtable discussions with islanders, IATFK educates other community groups that regularly interact with kids.

Bainbridge Youth Services, the police department, city government and area schools have all subscribed to the developmental assets approach.

“As a community, we have a lot of power to shape that social fabric,” Horsley said, “to shift our culture to be more supportive of kids – not just our own, but other people’s kids.”

Support can take many forms, but all IATFK techniques have one thing in common: the specific action of one adult interacting with one young person in ordinary situations.

“There is no secret recipe for including additional assets in the lives of our youth,” Ball said. “The little things add up. The daily interactions make a difference.”

The response has been encouraging, Ball said, as hundreds of individuals in the community have already embraced the developmental asset approach.

One group of islanders sponsored a series of block parties for adults and youth to know each other better.

Mayor Dwight Sutton said the program changed his leadership of young people.

“Before It’s About Time…for Kids!!, I thought, ‘yeah, kids are great, everyone should have one,’’” Sutton said. “But as far as thinking globally – what should we inculcate in kids, what attributes –- I didn’t know.

“I was dimly aware we should be good role models, but this put a sophisticated, long-term perspective there.”

Bainbridge Police Chief Bill Cooper said IATFK has given police the means to move from an “adversarial” relationship with kids, to a “working” one.

Smith has already noticed a change in attitude, which she said was evident at an IATFK leadership meeting last year.

“I’d done a lot of work in the community, before that, and I found that there was a lot of resistance to teens,” Smith said. “But then when I went to the meeting, there were 30 people with totally open minds about what the youth wanted.

“They listened to us.”