In the early 1990’s, our community faced some difficult challenges. After an off campus shooting, the Safe Community Task Force was formed after a joint council session.  This team held hearings and in the end, they made recommendations that have shaped the framework for the way we do our work today. A few year’s later, the county bankruptcy challenged our commitment to prevention, yet we worked together to maintain those programs that served our children and their families.

In 1996, the Irvine Prevention Coalition was formed. Our first funding came from a Healthy Start grant. Later, we received a five year Coalition Strengthening Grant from the Office of National Drug Control Program (ONDCP) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Currently, the coalition is funded by a second Coalition Strengthening Grant.

In the spring of 2001, the school district and the city both faced some tough budget cuts. The school district was at risk of losing many of the programs that support children and families. The city cuts included the elimination of the Community Youth Program Grants that provided resources for a variety of programs for at risk youth since the early 1990’s.

In response to this crisis, IUSD Guidance Resources and Project Success staff got together with some of our key partners  including the City of Irvine, Irvine Police Department, Families Forward and ICDP and wrote the Safe Schools Healthy Students grant. This federal grant was appropriated after the school shooting at Columbine High School to help communities develop programs that would create safety nets for at risk youth in order to prevent violence in schools and in the community.

Irvine was selected as a recipient of the funding which allowed us to continue to delivering a high level of service in the community.  In addition, the funding enabled us to work together to develop and implement school and community based prevention programs that were both research based and innovative.

The partners of the coalition develop and host several prevention programs, activities and events in the community. The Red Ribbon Celebration and the Irvine Family Fun Fair & Fun Run are two excellent examples of our partners working together. School based programs and activities sponsored by the coalition and developed by our partners have also become important in our prevention efforts. One example of this is the Middle School Youth Conference, an annual event that brings over 250 students together each fall to promote the value of tolerance.

Another benefit of the collaborative is that it allows us to bring together members of our community to address and respond to difficult issues in a timely manner. Over a period of just 14 months, our community lost three high school students to suicide. After the first suicide, the partners of the coalition responded by hosting training for school district and community leaders in the fall of 2003. Then, after two more students committed suicide in the summer of 2004, the Irvine Prevention Coalition convened the Suicide Prevention Task Force to bring together representatives from the community to develop specific strategies to prevent this tragedy from occurring again. A total of 45 community leaders and stakeholders participated in the process of identifying specific goals and objectives. A media subcommittee was formed and together they developed a media campaign which was launched in June of 2005. To date hundreds of posters have been placed on our high school and university campuses and at agencies throughout Irvine. In addition, we disseminated 30,000 pocket sized information and resource cards. The IPC provided the mechanism for the community to come together, achieve consensus and develop and launch a campaign in a very short period of time.  This truly is a testament to the level of cooperation and trust among our partners.

The IPC was fortunate to have a Safe Schools, Healthy Students grant which gave us the opportunity to develop many programs that met the needs of our community.  From the beginning, we knew that finding a way to sustain these programs was critical.

In the fall of 2005, the IPC Executive Board convened to identified priorities and to develop strategies to identify and secure needed resources.  The partners concluded that the early intervention programs, including Project Success and the Irvine Family Resource Center, were critical since they provide an invaluable safety net for young people and a referral source for our community partners.

Our thanks to the City of Irvine

Members of the IPC were invited to meet with key community leaders including our Mayor, City Council members, our City Manager and other coalition partners to discuss the community needs.

Then, in the spring of 2006, the City of Irvine did an amazing thing.  First, they awarded $125,000 to the Irvine Prevention Coalition to support our programs.  And if that wasn't enough, they unanimously agreed to allocate ten percent of the City's annual carry over to support school based prevention, health and early intervention programs. In 2006/2007, that support totaled over 1.3 million dollars.