Community Highlight: Uplift Midvale

Uplift Midvale and DOCJ Community Engagement

Midvale City, Utah, sits in the heart of Salt Lake County, offering suburban access, a strong sense of community, and a small-town feel. There, Uplift Midvale, a community coalition formed in 2022, is dedicated to supporting and improving the lives of Midvale’s Youth. Uplift Midvale has identified key protective factors to build up in Midvale’s young people: encouraging pro-social—or positive—activities and strengthening family attachment. Working with dedicated community partners, they have identified mentorship programs, gang prevention through Choose Gang Free, and youth leadership opportunities as pathways to meet these goals.

Kuuai Aiono, Youth Advocate and Recruitment Intern for Midvale City, can speak firsthand to these youth leadership opportunities.

“Uplift Midvale has shown me that community betterment is possible. Although we are still a young coalition, we have already been able to accomplish some meaningful and measurable progress, such as hiring a youth advocate, running programs that support and engage less fortunate youth, and even taking some of our government-interested youth to the Capitol to meet state representatives. All in all, I am proud of what Uplift Midvale has accomplished so far and cannot wait to see what more we can do in the future and beyond.”

The Juvenile Justice team is currently working directly with Uplift Midvale and planning activities with both the Youth Council and other Midvale community groups. As part of our Geospatial Analysis project, CCJJ brings engagement activities to communities, facilitating discussions of quantitative data and centering community-led stories and experiences. Later this spring, we will conduct a Community Walk in Midvale where residents themselves are identifying areas of strength, priorities, and improvement.

We are excited to update our partners and newsletter subscribers as this project continues. If you live in Midvale and want to take part, or if you’d like to bring these activities to your own community, please reach out!