"We're all pilgrims on the same journey, but some pilgrims have better road maps," author Nelson DeMille once said.

Plotting a comprehensive "road map" of resources for youth is the ultimate goal of the Youth Worker Coalition of the Fox Cities.

"There are literally 100 organizations that are serving youth, and we're all providing services," said Shannon Kenevan, director of Harmony Cafe in Appleton who co-founded the coalition with Colleen Rortvedt, who formerly organized teen programming at the Appleton Public Library. "No one has taken a look at clearly mapping it out and finding where there are gaps, what youth we are missing, what types of issues we are not addressing that we should and where the overlaps are, where we could collaborate and do it better."

Until now, that is.

Titled Building Blocks for the Future, the second annual Youth Worker Coalition Conference will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday at Liberty Hall in Kimberly. A highlight of the daylong event will be the Community Youth Resource Mapping sessions, which will begin mapping resources for area young people ages 6 to 25 into one cohesive tool that can be used as a reference point for all youth organizations in the Fox Valley.

The Youth Worker Coalition was established by local organizations, including Harmony Cafe, in 2004. Its purpose is to provide local professionals working with youth the opportunity to share resources, network, problem-solve and develop professionally.

Monthly meetings, held from 8 to 9 a.m. the second Wednesday of the month at Harmony Cafe, 124 N. Oneida St. in Appleton, offer presentations on issues relevant to youth workers, including gangs, behavior, drug abuse and positive youth development. Also included are professionally relevant topics such as stress management and communication skills.

"I've really been able to collaborate with other people from different agencies in the community who work with youth and be able to hear their perspective and things they're doing in their agencies and take some of those things and see if they might be able to help with some of the kids I work with here," said participant Jennifer Grube, therapist and group coordinator at the Sexual Assault Crisis Center in Appleton where more than half the clientele are under the age of 18.

Tammy Borden, Life! resources coordinator with Life! Promotions in Appleton, has been involved in the coalition for the last six months.

"There are a lot of hurting youth who are going through amazing circumstances: cutting, drugs, thoughts of suicide, abuse, bullying, poor self-image," she said. "It's nice to have a network of other caring youth workers and professionals that I can glean from or call if I want insight on how to handle a certain situation, or even direct a youth to if I feel they can be better served by working with another organization."

On a personal level, Kenevan said the coalition has opened his eyes to all that is available to youth in the Fox Valley.

"So often we get so caught up in our day-to-day stuff with our own organizations it's tough to sit back and realize what else is going on in the community. There's an amazing amount of stuff going on."

The group decided to pull together a conference and take all the presenters it has had throughout the year, add a few others and make it a full-day conference for people who couldn't make the monthly meetings, Kenevan said of last year's session, which attracted more than 100 youth professionals.

"It went over so well we decided to do it every year and see how it goes," he said.

Other breakout sessions will provide information on effective fundraising and promotion techniques, ways to prevent bullying, understanding poverty, unearthing assets that foster a healthy environment for youth and how to safely use the Internet, which is of particular concern these days.

"The Internet has definitely changed our lives in that it helped us be connected, so there are good sides," Grube said. "But there are those dark areas as well of the Internet where sexual predators seek out their victims, groom them and sometimes ultimately sexually abuse them."

In his presentation, "Developmental Assets 202," Paul Vidas, director of United with Youth, United Way Fox Cities, will share the Minneapolis-based Search Institute's 40 Developmental Assets Model, which fosters a healthy and nurturing environment for youth and teach participants how they can apply them in their work.

"A lot of work in positive youth development say kids need a sense of power, they need a sense of belonging, they need a sense of confidence and also a sense of importance," Vidas said. "If a person is aware of these things you begin to see them in your everyday interactions with kids."

Having a resource map of all the youth organizations in the area, Borden said, will "help provide an even greater pool of those who are available to reach youth and convince them that there are those out there who care and are there for them."