Sharing Our Best Practices

Milwaukee Brighter Futures is a network of people from Milwaukee organizations and neighborhoods who are committed to prevention and youth/family development strategies in Milwaukee. Established in 1999, the network currently involves over 130 organizations in regular monthly meetings, work groups, and training initiatives, all centered on sharing best practices in youth, family and neighborhood development.

Community Advocates, as the Milwaukee Brighter Futures Lead Agency, has brought together numerous existing networks and task forces to work collaboratively on building a strong community prevention system focusing on the issues of child abuse and neglect, teen pregnancy, youth violence, youth AODA issues, parenting and youth self-sufficiency.

The Milwaukee Brighter Futures Initiative has provided a community forum to identify “best practices” for youth-engagement, risky sexual behavior prevention, substance abuse prevention, child abuse and neglect prevention strategies, parenting support and family strengthening. Additionally, new people and new organizations have come to the table to learn and to provide innovative activities, approaches and strategies, which enable others to connect and integrate some of these new approaches.

As a State of Wisconsin-supported initiative, Milwaukee Brighter Futures is one of ten counties, agencies or tribal groups funded by the State of Wisconsin under the “Brighter Futures Initiative of 1999" (Sec. 46.99 of the statutes) through the Department of Health and Family Services. For information, click here.