Pleasanton Offers New Web Site to Provide Info for Youths

By Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Back in the "old days," word of mouth was the way that youths found out where the most interesting events were happening and what was going on in the community. Today's youths are far more tech-savvy and Pleasanton is making great strides towards keeping up with the times and providing information in a format that is more convenient for young adults to digest. One of the ways the community is serving the information needs of its young adults is a new web site.

The Youth Master Plan web site will be up toward the end of October or the beginning of November. The address is www.ptown411.com. "There are a bunch of components to this web site," says Steve Brozosky, a member of the Youth Master Plan Implementation Group and City Council member for Pleasanton. "There's a section on getting involved in the community and an online forum that talks about some of the initiatives that we're working on in the city. We're working on a youth center, a BMX park and other things here. So, it's an opportunity for youth to see what we're working on in the community and allow them to comment and participate. We're trying to get the youth to participate in the city topics that revolve around them."

Other portions of the web site will deal with more serious issues. " We have sections about the laws that have to do with teens like driving laws that they should know about," Brozosky says. "There's a whole section on the site for crisis intervention. This is the page that I hope you'd never have to go to - but if teens have a problem or a crisis in their life, we have a list of the resources that are available to them."

According to Brozosky, the most useful thing on the upcoming web site may be the calendar. "This calendar will list all of the events that are going on in the community that youth might be interested in," he says. These activities will range from games at their schools to dances that are going on to civic arts and job training. There are so many things going on in this community, but without a resource, it's hard for youths to find out what's going on."

Finally, in providing resources for youths in the area, the web site also offers opportunities for local businesses to participate. " Trivalleyjobs.com is a web site for the community where businesses can list jobs," Brozosky says. "We're trying to get people in the area to work in the community that they live in and this is a web site where business can list their available jobs. We've added a new attribute to the job listings where designate whether a particular job would be applicable to youth. Maybe it's going to be a seasonal job or it's going to be after school or weekends. If you say your job would be good for that, in addition to that job being listed on trivalleyjobs.com it will also be on the ptown411.com web site. This is something that we really need the business community to help us with. If they have any jobs that they think would be good for youth, they should enter them at trivalleyjobs.com. They can advertise there for free and it's a good resource for youth who want to earn some money and work in the community. It's a win-win situation for everybody."

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