Strategic Partnership with Search Institute

Peter Benson (left), President of the Search Institute, with Richard Krieg, President & CEO of The Horizon Foundation at the November 2004 Assets in Motion event.

Search Institute and The Horizon Foundation are, in their respective spheres, dynamic and catalytic organizations that are dedicated to positive youth development. Both organizations believe in evidence based decision-making, are highly networked, routinely convene organizational and community leaders, develop and apply new knowledge.

As a philanthropy, the Foundation adopted the youth asset development model and is committed to its broad application at the community scale. As a research and implementation organization, Search Institute has articulated a vision for healthy communities in which people, places and settings rally their asset building capacity.

The Foundation and the Institute have entered into a partnership to create in Howard County, Maryland the most comprehensive application of asset development theory and practice in the United States. Over its 40-year life, Search Institute has seen Asset Development projects emerge in over 600 communities nationwide. Since the early 1990s, this effort has assumed many of the features of a movement, triggering energy and innovation nationwide. The lessons learned through this experience will be applied to Howard County, Maryland and, importantly, will be combined with The Horizon Foundation’s pragmatic, strategic approach to community change.

The vision that we have developed includes the following dimensions:

1. A close, mutually rewarding and energy-releasing partnership between the two organizations;

2. An exciting initiative based in Howard County, Maryland that exemplifies the theory and teachings of Search Institute;

3. A nationally recognized and highly visible pilot project that offers guidance, hope, tactics and strategies to communities across the country;

4. An enormous “natural experiment” that is truly community-wide in scope and achieves measurable change at the individual, organizational, system and policy levels;

5. An effort that stimulates a large and growing resource pool composed of major funders, academic researchers, and others who are inclined to support this effort;

6. A multi-year project that stimulates robust national debate, books and publications on the need and ability of communities to improve the resilience of young people through broad, sustained application of the asset development model.