How Ready is Your Organization to Build and Sustain Youth-Adult Partnership? Use my new Initial Self-Evaluation and Organizational Audit to find out.

I’ve experienced on many occasions that the most impactful part of supporting a systems change process was when I asked new questions of an organization and facilitated dedicated discussions when everyone answered those questions. All of our organizations are moving all day, every day toward our goals, focused on doing all the things that make the organization a success. It’s incredibly challenging in the midst of that rush to lead deep systems change for ourselves, and deep systems change is exactly what’s required to embed authentic youth-adult partnership into your organization’s governance and operations. 

My Organizational Audit of Readiness to Build and Sustain Youth-Adult Partnership will ask your organization new questions about its connections to young people impacted by your decisions, will reveal alignment between your talk and your walk, and will recommend immediate actions to build on your strengths and turn around weaknesses.

Early Self-Evaluation

I recommend every organization, even ones not interested in a full audit, conduct a self-evaluation of readiness and interest in youth-adult partnership. Is your organization at the starting line of youth-adult partnership? Are you just getting started on a Couch to 5K? Or are you ready to run the marathon of systems change? This self-evaluation forms the first step of the audit process. 

What does an Organizational Audit include?

When you commit to an audit, your organization and I will partner on several steps following the self-evaluation. 

First, we will conduct listening sessions with your organization’s staff and leadership, the governing body if you have one (i.e. a Board of Directors), community or system partners, and youth impacted by your organization’s decisions. We will combine what we hear from all of these stakeholders to form a 360 degree view of your organization’s current readiness to embark on youth-adult partnership.

Second, we will interview a few key members of each stakeholder group. Our goal for these interviews will be additional clarity and a deeper understanding of what we learned in the surveys and listening sessions.  

Third, we will review your organization’s governing and operations documents. These documents reflect both your organization’s origin story and how you carry out your day-to-day work. Do the documents you use every day support your goals? Do they build mutual respect and trust among stakeholders?

I will then provide a written audit report to you, which will outline how ready your organization truly is to embark on youth-adult partnership and how to build on what you have, provide helpful comparisons to peer organizations, and recommend next steps. And we will work together to share the report with everyone who contributed to our learning and with the public. This sharing step is crucial to all future work since it creates accountability within and outside the organization.

I welcome introductory conversations with any organization considering an audit, and I’m happy to review and provide feedback on results of self-evaluations even if you are not considering a full audit. Let’s talk about it!

Doing Better: More Organizations Introduce Staff to Youth-Adult Partnership

Just as youth need support to engage in youth-adult partnership, adults need to build knowledge and skills for authentic partnership. Over the last year, I facilitated training for multiple organizations seeking to advance youth-adult partnership.

Two organizations stood out by committing the time and resources to train their full staff. Establishing common language and understanding of youth engagement across the entire staff supports everyone in achieving authentic engagement. Monroe Circuit Court Juvenile Probation Office and FHI 360’s National Institute for Work and Learning (NIWL) trained frontline workers who engage directly with youth and their managers, plus NIWL included communication and accounting staff. 

Diverse Audiences Stand to Benefit from Youth-adult Partnership 

Each of these organizations works with youth in unique ways, but they share the potential to benefit from implementing youth-adult partnership both in day-to-day interactions with youth and in governance.

FHI 360 NIWL is an international partner for several employers and workforce development sites serving youth and young adults. Two of NIWL’s programs also convene young adult leadership councils from these local sites, partnering with youth leaders to shape the programs that affect them. NIWL staff benefit from opportunities to strengthen youth-adult partnership within the leadership councils and to identify new ways to support youth engagement for the sites they serve.

Monroe Circuit Court juvenile probation officers and agency leadership can apply youth-adult partnership in their day-to-day administration of probation and to reimagine the balance of power between probation or court officers and youth on probation and their families. 

Youth-Adult Partnership and Anti-Oppression Training 

My introductory youth-adult partnership training for these organizations focused on my four principles for authentic youth-adult partnership - shared power, shared accountability, shared resources, and shared language. I customized each training based on the goals of the organization, time available with their staff, and pre-existing knowledge and capacity of participants. 

According to pre- and post-training evaluations, my training increased participants’ capacity to identify adultism and authentic youth engagement and gave participants tools to think differently about oppression and power in their work.  Trainees found particular value in tools to help them apply the four principles by interrogating the balance of power between youth and adults and envisioning equitable access to resources youth might need to participate in spaces of shared power.

If you are interested in training for yourself or your organization, find more information on  the Training page.

Inclusion Decision Tree: Intro Animation!

My Inclusion Decision Tree is a simple tool to guide your plan for community engagement. A new animation introduces the five questions in the tree. These five questions can help maximize your chance to make the best decision possible by doing the best community engagement possible.

For help using the Tree or more in depth strategic planning around community engagement, reach out to me.

I was excited to work with an awesome animator in New York to create the animation. His contact available on request.

Inclusion Decision Tree

This video walks you through a simple tool to help determine if your organization includes affected people in its decisions. While I mostly use policy-making for examples here, the Inclusion Decision Tree is useful in diverse situations by any organization hoping to make more effective decisions.

I was honored to originally record this for the Pretrial Justice Institute’s Pi-Con.