One of my great pleasures as an editor is to periodically "surf the sites" in child advocacy. I often find what to me, at least, are fresh stories of good works and good results that serve as an inspiration for my work at Child Advocacy 360 and Connect for Kids. RuralSuccess.org has several winning examples.

October 2007—Our partner Child Advocacy 360 brings you "Readers' Choice Stories," in which readers vote with their eyes, clicks and emails on the best of Who's Doing What That Works.

Measuring and improving quality is one of the main challenges facing the field. A comprehensive quality assessment program in Iowa is beginning to uncover lessons about measurement and whether quality can drive policy and funding decisions. This Forum for Youth Investment Ready by 21 profile takes a look at the early results.

The Innovation Center offers excellent, free guides to mapping community strengths and needs, engaging youth and adults together, planning civic and local action—and creating lasting change in communities and for participants. You’ll want to bookmark this library! For lessons learned and strategies to engage youth and create effective community programs, visit the Research Pages.

As a companion to its excellent toolkits, the Innovation Center offers strategies, lessons learned, and success stories of effective youth-adult partnerships working to strengthen communities across the country.

What can every city and town do to strengthen families and improve outcomes for children and youth? The National League of Cities has the answer—its new City Platform details four essential tasks for strengthening families and improving outcomes: (1) identifying needs and priorities, (2) supporting city-school partnerships, (3) engaging young people and encouraging youth leadership, and (4) measuring gains over time. This action agenda includes a look at 21 promising opportunities for city action. Get you copy online or by contacting Michael Karpman at 202-626-3072 or karpman@nlc.org.

As part of the October 27, 2005 White House Conference on Youth, the Bush administration released a step-by-step guidebook for community groups to help disadvantaged young people overcome the challenges they face. The Web-based guide offers tips on getting Census data about your community, information on federally funded programs serving your youth, and up-to-date research on effective youth development policies and programs.

This Web site offers information and resources designed to help people who care about building an economy that allows all Americans the opportunity for stable jobs with adequate pay and benefits. It includes a toolkit for communication and advocacy around living wages.

This W.K. Kellogg Foundation guide helps nonprofits bolster community-based projects by connecting assets in their own organizations to those in their communities. Worksheets help organizations gauge their project's interaction with local residents and institutions, the local economy and resources outside the community. A sample community asset map is also included.

As evacuees from Hurricane Katrina started pouring in to the Houston Astrodome, a youth development trainer from Washington D.C. named Charles Modiano found himself working side by side with energetic young volunteers to help the displaced. In those hours, Modiano decided that needs created and uncovered by the storm could be the focus of a new effort to strengthen youth volunteerism nationwide. He spoke to Rob Capriccioso about his vision.