Children First

Children First is transforming systems and uplifting youth and families throughout Golden Valley, Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and the surrounding communities, and your support will help sustain our mission.

Our organization's programs and efforts ensure that all young people feel included, valued, and deeply connected to a caring community, leading to improvements in economic mobility for families. 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 throughout the 2025-2026 school year and beyond:

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 designed for pre-Kindergarten learners and our year-round Latino Parent Empowerment Group. Parents co-design these programs to ensure they meet community needs and focus on what matters most to their children as they begin their educational journey. Taking place each August, The St. Louis Park Summer Reading Festival is a week of events based on childhood literacy, with fun-filled activities and children's book giveaways to convey the joy of reading and learning with our youngest community members. 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 2026.

Mental Wellness 

With a youth-led and data-driven approach, our Youth For Change Coalition focuses on improving mental health for middle and high school students, with a priority on supporting LGBTQIA youth. Youth leaders from Benilde-St. Margaret's High School, Hopkins High School, St. Louis Park High School, and other area schools collaborate to develop targeted strategies to bring mental health awareness and support to their peers, and have shared their work at both statewide and national conferences. This school year, the Youth For Change Coalition is releasing a white paper report on the State of Youth in St. Louis Park and have presented a series of mental wellness workshops to the community.

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.

Fiscal Map Project

Children First is commissioning a fiscal map to chart funding and philanthropy sources available within Golden Valley, Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and the surrounding communities. Once completed, this fiscal map will assist all nonprofit organizations and governmental entities within our community to assess resources and identify areas of need to better help children and families comprehensively.

We are so grateful for the community's support of this work. Your donation has a real impact in our community — give today!

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.