R.T. Rybak to speak at Nov. 6 Rotary Club of Edina meeting
Former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will be the program speaker at the next Rotary Club of Edina meeting, Thursday, Nov. 6. Rybak will speak about Generation Next, a group of civic, business and education leaders aiming to close the achievement and opportunity gaps for students of color in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The Rotary Club of Edina meets at the Edina Country Club from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome. Cost for the program and lunch is $18.
Please note that next week's Rotary meeting will be on Monday, Nov. 10, when we will host the Area 3 Rotary Veterans Luncheon at the Edina Country Club. This lunch honoring area veterans begins at 11:30 a.m. and concludes at 1:30 p.m. All Edina Rotarians can invite two veterans for the event free of charge. Each additional guest is $25. Please register yourself and any guests by logging into the website and going to "Events."
There is no Rotary Club of Edina meeting Thursday, Nov. 13.
The Rotary Club of Edina will welcome R.T. Rybak as program speaker at their Thursday, Nov. 6, meeting. Rybak, former mayor of Minneapolis, will speak about Generation Next.
Generation Next, a coalition of civic, business and education leaders, aims to close the achievement and opportunity gaps for students of color in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The group uses rigorous data analysis and community engagement to identify what works to close these gaps, and replicate the most promising practices.
Rybak served as mayor of the city of Minneapolis from 2002 to 2013. During his tenure as mayor, Rybak led efforts to make Minneapolis a national leader in innovative, cradle-to-career approaches to youth development and has worked to highlight the crisis of our region’s achievement gap and advance effective strategies for ending it.
As mayor, Rybak founded the Minneapolis Promise, an innovative cluster of coordinated efforts to get students college- and career-ready and put them on the path to success. The Minneapolis Promise says to young people that if they stay in school and focus on their education, Minneapolis will support them with high-quality summer jobs and work-readiness training through the STEP-UP program, counseling to help them plan a vision for their future at privately-funded college and career centers in every Minneapolis public high school, and financial assistance to attend college through The Power of YOU, a collaboration between Saint Paul College, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, and the Saint Paul and Minneapolis Public Schools.
Rybak has called STEP-UP the achievement of which he is the most proud. Since 2004, STEP-UP has put 18,000 Minneapolis youth—86 percent young people of color, 50 percent from immigrant families and 93 percent living in poverty—to work in meaningful summer employment. The White House recognized STEP-UP as a national model for youth summer jobs at a conference that President Obama attended.
Rybak has been recognized as a national “Afterschool Champion” by the Afterschool Alliance not only for his leadership of the Minneapolis Promise, but for founding the Minneapolis Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, an innovative public-health approach that has dramatically lowered youth involvement in violent crime, for being a champion of the youth-led Minneapolis Youth Congress, and for his active involvement in Minneapolis’ Youth Coordinating Board.
A Minneapolis native, Rybak spent almost 30 years working in journalism, the commercial real estate business, publishing and the Internet before being elected mayor in his first run for public office. He and his wife Megan O’Hara, youth employment eirector at Wilderness Inquiry, have two grown children.
For more information on Generation Next, go to http://www.gennextmsp.org.
The Rotary Club of Edina meets at the Edina Country Club from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome. The cost for lunch and the program is $18.