Community Youth Development Approach: A Youth Leadership Approach

1. Community Youth Development Approach: A Youth Leadership Approach Presented by Paul L. Watson Jr. Watson & Associates International www.watsonandassociatesintl.com

2. What is Youth Development ? • Youth Development is NOT trying to help our young people lead problem-free lives by controlling their behavior. • Rather, Youth Development IS facilitating a journey or process that produces the outcome of youth becoming a healthy, happy, adult making positive contributions to their families and communities

3. What is Youth Development ? • Youth Development is accomplished by……….. - Creating opportunities for youth to grow, learn and develop toward the desired outcomes. - Providing the emotional, motivational and strategic supports necessary to allow the young person to take full advantage of the opportunities that are made available.

4. What’s in it for you and your organization? • To improve our communities in the areas of – Housing - Jobs Safety - Commerce -Infrastructure - Human Services - Education - Arts - Culture – Media -Faith Ethics - Civic Participation - Social Interaction - Individual growth of Residents

5. What’s in it for you and your organization? • We need to utilize all of the resources in our communities that are available - this includes YOUTH

6. What’s in it for you and your organization? • You want to increase youth participation in your organization because………. - It is critical to the immediate well-being of communities and institutions, not just the youth involved. There is a need to define and maintain a balance between individual development and civic or community change.

7. What’s in it for you and your organization? • You want to increase youth participation in your organization because………. - Youth participation is occurring everywhere, not just in separate youth-specific projects. There is a need to define youth participation as an integral part of community planning and problem solving rather that as a series of discrete, compartmentalized projects.

8. What’s in it for you and your organization? • You want to increase youth participation in your organization because………. - Youth participation is occurring in many forms – service, governance, advocacy, organizing. - Youth participation involves learning and work, as opposed to uncompensated volunteering that is detached from career interests.

9. What’s in it for you and your organization? • You want to increase youth participation in your organization because………. - It is the right and responsibility of all young people, not just those well positioned to “give back” because of income, education, or family background.

10. Young People Want To Help ! • Young people feel the effects of crime and violence. • They see the results of idleness and lack of supervision. • They frequently participate in structured activities as young teens, but participation declines with age.

11. Young People Want To Help ! • They lack work and employment opportunities • They want adult support • They want to help make things better.

12. Community Youth Development Approach Communities Supporting Youth and Youth Supporting Communities

13. Youth Development History • The decades between 1960 and 2000 have seen tremendous shifts in youth policy and practice in the United States. • These shifts have altered the definition of young people’s responsibilities, rights, competencies, and needs, as well as those of their families, institutions, and communities.

14. Youth Development History • Changes are evident in the way youth, family and community issues are framed – for example, how the “deficits” language has been softened by the concept of “assets.”

15. Youth Development History • We’ve witnessed a shift in the roles that young people, families, and community residents are encouraged to play as stakeholders in their own development. • In addition, we’ve seen increases in the youth, families, and community fields’ understanding of how the well-being of their respective populations co-varies.

16. Youth Development History • Most importantly, and most recently, there has been a growing awareness of the synergy created when young people, families, and community stakeholders plan and implement projects together.

17. Youth Development History Looking Back – • 1960s. – The sixties witnessed a growth in public and political attention to identifying and understanding youth with serious problems, such as dropouts, runaways, unwed parents, abused children and youth, and delinquents.

18. Questions Needing Answers • Who were they? • Why were they in trouble? • What did they need?

19. Youth Development History • 1970s. – The birth of a response to these young people focused on alternative youth services in the seventies. • The growth of these programs, made possible by increases in federal and state dollars for “troubled” youth, marked a shift in thinking about working with young people in difficult circumstances.

20. Youth Development History • Though young people were in need of help, they were seen as capable of making decisions and helping themselves. • The programs built on, rather than squelched, young people’s sense that they could make a difference.

21. Youth Development History • By the end of the seventies the calls for programs that addressed young people’s needs before they ran away, dropped out, or became pregnant, began to grow.

22. Youth Development History • 1980s. – A new emphasis on primary prevention took hold in the eighties. Practitioners and policy makers honed in on the high cost and modest effectiveness of crisis programs, but the focus remained on reducing problems.

23. Youth Development History • Hundred of programs and curricula emerged to stop teens from drinking, smoking, having sex (or unprotected sex), being truant or violent. • As the redundancies became clear (multiple programs targeting the same young people), the calls for comprehensive prevention programs grew louder.

24. Current Thinking • 1990s. – It was in this decade that the youth development approach began to take root. • The idea that “problem free is not fully prepared” took hold. • This sparked calls for increased funding of non-problem focused programming, in addition to changes in approach and funding among programs and practitioners who traditionally worked with vulnerable youth.

25. Current Thinking • The idea that “young people grow up in communities, not programs” also gained currency, encouraging a new call for greater community investment in youth development. • It was during this time that the National Network for Youth coined the term “Community Youth Development” (CYD) to signal a new approach to youth development.

26. Community Youth Development Community Youth Development Community Development Youth Development Community Youth Development combines the best principles of youth development with the best principles of community development

27. Community Youth Development • CYD was powered by the belief that young people and adults could work together to change their communities into places where young people could grow up healthy.

28. Youth Participation forCommunity Change Youth Participation Community Change Youth Development ? Which Outcomes?

29. Community Youth Development Youth Contributing to Communities Young people and adults working together to create the necessary conditions for the successful development of themselves, their peers, families, and communities Communities Supporting Youth CYD is youth of all ages, circumstances and backgrounds making a difference building skills, supporting people, voicing opinions, acting on issues, leading causes, advocating for change, creating solutions, organizing groups, educating others, accessing progress in their lives and others – their peers, families, organizations and communities by taking on roles with others to address issues or improve community.

30. Community Youth Development Declaration What is the future that we stand for ? • Meaningful and Balanced Life Community Youth Development (CYD) honors individuals making a commitment to personal, community and youth development. We also strongly affirm the need for work dynamically balanced with rest, relaxation and fun. In this way we create a healthy environment in which we can be resources for the Seventh Generation.

31. Community Youth Development Declaration • Youth Valued As Partners CYD creates the environment and opportunity for the voices of youth to be heard and their leadership to emerge. In this environment young people are fully valued and participate in decisions that affect their lives. CYD is committed to the creation of opportunities that allow youth to develop that capacity necessary to engage in life-long learning.

32. Community Youth Development Declaration • Personal and Community Learning Embraced CYD appreciates and promotes learning as a never-ending process requiring an open mind, ability to reflect on experiences, valuing other’s perspectives, acknowledging and accepting our imperfections, and utilizing each person’s ability to contribute.

33. Personal and Community Learning Embraced • Participatory design of communication, both formal and informal is integral. The process of learning recognizes that the question is the essence of learning rather than the “answer/solution.” Adults must be open to the absence of absolutes. Youth must learn what the questions are. This learning is a non-linear process including reflection, which is larger that an event or activity.

34. Community Youth Development Declaration • Mutually Supportive and Sustainable Communities Through CYD, communities should be places where all people are able to live, work, and play, not in fear of their safety, health, wealth, or well-being. Communities should recognize and utilize the diversity and uniqueness of its membership. Each individual should have a stake in the community and investment in their fellow community members.

35. Mutually Supportive and Sustainable Communities • All members should have opportunities to meaningfully participate as leaders in the development of sustainable communities with responsibility to the development of its youth membership. All members must have access, opportunity and a voice in the decision-making process. Lastly, communities and their members should have space to grow, contribute and abide in harmony.

36. Community Youth Development Declaration • Democracy Realized We believe in a democracy. Decisions and actions that affect community should be collective – of, by and for all people. This means full inclusion of all members of a community with maximum participation sought and valued.

37. Democracy Realized • Age or other differences do not bar members from participation – these differences are embraced. Politics and practices developed when the economy was mostly agricultural, when the population was half of today’s or when only landowning people could vote, may be barriers to the achievement of democratic ideals today.

38. Community Youth Development Declaration • Just, Compassionate and Joyful World Young people deserve the opportunity to experience the joy of living life. Adults and youth must work in partnership to create and sustain just, compassionate and appreciative communities, nations and ultimately the world. If we truly have respect for ourselves and others, we would create and live in peaceful environments that ensure the safety of all people.

39. Just, Compassionate and Joyful World • To secure the future for everyone means providing those things that are essential to the well-being of all people now and to the seventh generation. These essentials would include: adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, education and other support systems, healthy recreation, and the protection and preservation of Mother Earth.

40. Just, Compassionate and Joyful World • The promotion of these healthy ideas through the media should replace the perversities that constantly bombard us in the media of today. The songs that the young people sing should be expressions of the joy experienced from harmony and diversity rather that expressing the pain of trying to survive from day to day.

41. Community Youth Development Declaration • Caring for the Seventh Generation All people are part of the Earth’s system, not apart from them. Relationships within these systems are material and spiritual. Every decision we make today will effect the earth, her resources and our great, great, great, great, great grand-children. Therefore every decision must be held to the standard of its effects on the Seventh Generation.