If you haven’t checked in with Children First lately, this is your moment—because your support is helping to transform systems and uplift youth across St. Louis Park, Hopkins, and the surrounding communities.
Children First is on a mission to ensure all young people feel included, valued, and deeply connected to a caring community. Our North Star: every person and organization in our community is knowledgeable, strategically aligned, and actively involved in increasing positive outcomes for kids—especially those impacted by race, ethnicity, or poverty-related opportunity gaps.
We’re not just talking about change—we’re building it through focused, data-informed action in three key areas in 2025:
Early Years
Every child should start school ready to succeed—academically, socially-emotionally, and physically.
We engage parents as partners and leaders through programs like our Bilingual Summer StoryTime series for entering Kindergarteners and a year-round Latino Parent Empowerment Group. Parents co-design these programs to ensure they meet community needs. We also raise awareness about Early Childhood Screening at age 3.5, work to improve access to screening, and are launching a community study on childcare access and affordability in 2025.
Mental Wellness
Youth-led and data-driven, this initiative focuses on improving mental health for middle and high school students, with a priority on supporting LGBTQIA youth. Youth leaders from St. Louis Park High School, Benilde-St. Margaret's High School, and the Performing Arts High School have developed targeted strategies launching this year and have shared their work at both statewide and national conferences. They’re also releasing a White Paper on the State of Youth in St. Louis Park in the fall.
Next up: Future Bound
All students deserve a clear and supported path to adulthood. We’re relaunching our Upper Grades/Post-Secondary/Career Readiness Action Network to improve middle-grade math, high school graduation rates, post-secondary enrollment, and career readiness. Goal setting begins in 2025—with a commitment to ensuring every student in our community is prepared for what comes next.
We are so grateful for the community's support of this work. Will you be giving today? WE HOPE SO!
More About Our History
The seed for Children First was planted more than 25 years ago in March 1992, when Carl Holmstrom, superintendent of St. Louis Park Schools, made a presentation about the plight of young people to the St. Louis Park Rotary Club. Carl’s speech was so inspiring that two entrepreneur Rotarians pushed the community to dream of a way to make life better for its young people.
The question became: How does a city rally its citizens, schools, families and neighborhoods to help all children and teenagers thrive? Armed with this question, Dr. Holmstrom and the two benefactors invited Search Institute to help St. Louis Park create a citywide effort. A yearlong process of community forums, focus groups, surveys and interviews led to the creation of Children First, the nation’s first community initiative organized to rally all its residents and institutions to nurture the healthy development of children and teenagers based on Search Institute’s pioneering research on Developmental Assets. Developmental Assets are building blocks of successful development important for all youth, which research consistently shows are strongly related to positive outcomes for young people across race, socio-economic status, gender, age, family composition and type of community.
Children First was founded by a partnership among the business, city, health, faith and educational communities in St. Louis Park, MN. Linked by the shared vision of raising asset-rich youth, this collaborative continues to mobilize a significant number of citizens and organizations to promote developmental assets.
The Children First model and scientific studies of its impact have been published in a number of important national and international academic journals and books, including:
After Children First was launched in 1993, more than 600 communities across the United States, Canada, and around the world, launched similar initiatives. As the first model in this Healthy Communities – Healthy Youth movement, Children First has played an important role as a teaching community. Countless city leaders – from New York to California to various cities in Australia, South Africa and Brazil – have utilized community-building innovations first created in St. Louis Park.
Organization name
Children First
Tax id (EIN)
30-1409469
Categories
Education , Children & Family , Community , Economic Development
BIPOC Serving
BIPOC Serving
LGBTQ+ Serving
LGBTQ+ Serving
Address
2700 Louisiana Ave S #26724