Following my shift away from working within the juvenile justice system, I am so excited to focus all of my energy on the possibilities of working with the more joyful youth-serving organizations out there! I’ve worked in these spaces several times before - including by creating and facilitating after-school programs for high school students in Baltimore and running national conferences for civically-engaged youth. I’ve also studied and worked with several models of authentic, robust youth engagement in these kinds of organizations.
In these joyful spaces, authentic youth engagement and youth-adult partnership achieve important outcomes of more successful programming design and implementation, increased positive youth development skill building, and staff professional development toward equity and leadership.
In thinking about how youth-adult partnership can look in afterschool, arts, education and social justice organizations, in particular, I’m excited to build on some models I’ve seen throughout my career. Here are some examples of how I anticipate building or deepening youth-adult partnership with youth-serving partners.
Nonprofit Organizations
In any nonprofit organization, opportunities usually exist for deeper youth engagement in boards. The fiduciary duties of boards of directors typically preclude youth under 18 from serving, but opportunities exist to tie youth advisory bodies to a board or to engage young alumni as board members. Boards can start by implementing a survey of youth participants to seek input on crucial questions facing the board, including the performance of the organization’s leadership.
Afterschool and Arts Programs
Afterschool and arts organizations can increase youth participation and satisfaction by engaging youth participants as program co-designers and evaluators. Long-term planning can also contribute to job training and opportunities for young alumni as teachers or facilitators of the program.
Philanthropic Organizations
Philanthropy also has a crucial role to play by increasing the skills and resources of grantees to engage youth. I frequently see ‘youth engagement’ as an ill-defined request in funding applications, but many organizations will struggle to make youth engagement authentic without significant resources to support it, technical assistance to increase staff capacity, and accountability measures.
Schools
Student government can and should be about more than planning the dances and ice cream socials. Principals and school leaders can improve outcomes for students across the board by asking students what they need. For example, one unexpected discovery about truancy came from students sharing that their school attendance often hinged on clean clothes and access to food. Schools struggling with truancy that were able to alleviate those burdens for students in need saw increases in attendance, which was only possible because adults listened to student voices.
Social Justice Organizations
Incredible examples of youth-led or youth-informed social justice organizations exist, giving social justice organizations who want to build or expand youth engagement strong samples to learn from. Social justice organizations have unique and important opportunities to directly engage youth in directing and implementing advocacy or policy prioritization and development. A particular benefit of youth engagement for social justice organizations is avoiding unintended consequences. I have personally seen multiple examples when authentic youth voice led to crucial changes to legislative or policy changes that would have created unintended harm for youth if implemented as originally proposed.
If you or someone in your network is interested in exploring youth-adult partnership in after-school, education, arts, or social justice organizations with me, reach out!