Healthy Community Initiative’s Meleah Follen (Youth Engagement and Northfield Community Collaborative Director) and Martha Lundin (Youth Engagement Coordinator) spoke last month at a press conference at the Capitol organized by the Minnesota Alliance With Youth. They talked about how important AmeriCorps Promise Fellows are to HCI’s work in Rice County, including with the TORCH program, and how students who interact with Promise Fellows are more engaged in school, more likely to attend regularly, and more likely to graduate on time.

The Minnesota Alliance With Youth has released a report about chronic student absenteeism that provides six tangible solutions for schools, districts and policymakers and includes a spotlight on Northfield’s TORCH program. You can read the full report here.