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.

Youth-Adult Partnership Models: Sustainability Champion

As I highlight champions of youth-adult partnership across the country , I’m reminded that different models work for different organizations. This post highlights one organization that has managed to sustain youth-adult partnership in organizational governance for an extraordinarily long time.

America’s Promise Alliance 

America’s Promise Alliance (https://www.americaspromise.org/) has sustained youth members on its Board of Directors and Board of Trustees for over a decade. America’s Promise reserves at least two seats on its Board of Directors for youth members and currently has three. Youth Board members have full voting and acting rights.

America’s Promise also has youth members on its Board of Trustees, a robust steering committee of leaders from among America’s Promise’s 450+ partner organizations. While not required, the organization does this to mirror its Board of Directors and incorporate youth voice into the fabric of their strategic programmatic work.

America’s Promise does not pay stipends or wages to its youth or adult Board members, but it does cover travel costs for the youth members.

Key to success #1: Cemented in Governance Documents

America’s Promise bylaws require youth seats on the Board of Directors.

Section 3.4 Youth Representation. Young people shall help shape and contribute to Alliance strategies and activities. No less than two (2) youth representatives aged 16-24 shall be nominated and elected to the Board for a term of two (2) years.

Key to success #2: Compromise

Initially, America’s Promise hoped to engage youth under the age of 18 on its Boards. However, the multiple trips around the country required each year and other challenges limited its success.

America’s Promise found that young adults over 18 were better able to meaningfully engage with the existing level of staff support. At the time, America’s Promise wasn’t able to dedicate the additional staff time they felt younger Board members would need and so decided to focus on 18-year-old youth and above until they could fill that additional need. As a result, America’s Promise has been able to meaningfully and consistently engage young adult leaders on its Boards for over a decade.

Key to success #3: A National Recruitment Network of Youth-Service Organizations

As a national-level organization with a vast network of youth-serving organizations, America’s Promise recruits youth Board members through a national call to these organizations. Developing and maintaining a pipeline of rising youth leaders can be a challenge, especially for organizations that do not directly serve youth. Connecting with partners provides meaningful support for ongoing recruitment and can give youth a home-based link through which to access help, training, and guidance as needed.

To learn more about how your organization can sustainably engage youth and adults as partners in decision-making, reach out using the Contact Me page.

Youth-Adult Partnership Models: Authenticity Champion

Champions of youth-adult partnership across the country inspire me and can serve as models for other organizations hoping to engage youth in shared power and decision-making. This post highlights one organization that has managed to build truly authentic youth-adult partnership in organizational governance and decision-making.

National Network for Youth (NN4Y) is a national advocacy organization with the goal of preventing and ending youth homelessness. NN4Y achieves a unique authentic level of youth-adult partnership in two ways. First, the very diverse youth engaged in NN4Y’s leadership have all experienced homelessness. Second, youth “drive decisions at all levels of the organization and have consistently for the past five years”, according to Executive Director Darla Bardine.  

Even stand out youth-led organizations and governments tend to struggle engaging traditionally disenfranchised youth. However, NN4Y not only engages but also builds the leadership capacity of youth who are among some of the most disenfranchised - having experienced homelessness and often youth of color. 

Second, adults at all levels of the organization remain rigorously dedicated to authentic youth voice in their decision-making. From the policies advanced by the organization to education and skill-building for member organizations, youth have shared power in everything NN4Y does.

Key to success #1: Dedicated Staff Support

NN4Y employs a full-time staff person responsible solely for supporting youth leaders and their partnership with the organization. The Director of Youth Partnerships manages youth engagement in NN4Y’s decision-making and provides individual support to youth leaders, meeting them where they are and helping them develop the tools to succeed as advocates and in life.

Key to success #2: Guiding Principles

Among NN4Y’s eight guiding principles is Youth/Adult Partnerships. The guiding principles apply to NN4Y itself and serve as aspirational principles for all of its over 300 member organizations. 

Key to success #3: Dedication at All Levels of the Organization

Every member of NN4Y’s staff and Board of Directors is fundamentally dedicated to the youth leadership of the organization. In addition, NN4Y prioritizes its youth-adult partnership to its funders and makes the case for the importance of sufficient support.

Interested in building authentic youth-adult partnership to achieve stronger decisions for your organization? Reach out to me through the Contact Me page.

FAQ: Why do I spend so much time focused on adults when supporting youth-adult partnerships?

Adults interested in youth engagement often think the bulk of the work in building youth-adult shared decision making will focus on the youth. However, I see more of the crucial work happening with the adults in the organization.

I have found that the barriers to youth-adult partnership often arise from adults. Overcoming three barriers typically fills much of my early focus with organizations: adultism, bureaucracy and comfort in professional spaces. Once adults open supportive seats at the decision-making table to youth, I find that youth are ready to fill those spaces.

Adultism

This “-ism” joins the collection of implicit biases we all carry, and we can limit their power over our behavior with intentional, conscientious focus. As my colleague Khalid Samarrae of the W. Haywood Burns Institute once so clearly laid out for me, we adults received training as children and youth that our voices were not valuable and we would have to earn our seat at the table through age and experience. Having finally earned our seats, we now repeat that training to a new generation of children and youth.

We also hesitate to let go of what power we have earned. Our perception that we worked hard to earn that power, whether or not leavened by recognizing that our status as adults confers an inherent privilege, makes us fear parting with it.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy may be the hidden menace to all good collaboration. It once took me a year to remove purely bureaucratic barriers to paying youth for participation on an advisory body. I also had to once stop efforts to engage incarcerated youth in a juvenile justice advisory body because the detention facility’s rules required them to wear shackles while in the room.

Recognizing that bureaucracy can have value protecting institutions and individuals, we must continually ask ourselves how do we reduce delays, paperwork, and chains of command to the minimum required to accomplish that protection.

Assumed Comfort in Professional Spaces

Adults spend a lot of time in meetings, writing emails, and speaking in the various codes of our respective professions. We also assume our peers around the table share similar skills. On the other hand, youth spend a lot of time in classrooms, exploring and developing passions, and with peers in person or online. When we bring youth into the adult-centered spaces of meetings and work, we need to make those spaces less adult-centered and more inclusive.

Adults can overcome these barriers to shared decisionmaking by intentionally recognizing and shifting away from adultist behavior, taking a critical eye toward bureaucracy, and building more inclusive collaborative tables.

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.

FAQ: Should organizations pay youth to serve on councils, boards, or other decision-making bodies?

Rule of thumb: Pay youth if adults receive pay for the same or equivalent work.

Youth should be paid when serving on a board with adults who serve on the board in their professional capacity. If adult are paid, including because service on the board or council is part of their jobs, then youth should also receive a wage.

Why should organizations pay youth?

Youth do receive several benefits from serving on councils, boards, and the like, including professional networks, valuable experience, and resume or college application material. However, paying youth when adults are paid demonstrates that the organization places equal value on the adults’ and young people’s time, expertise and contributions.

In addition, and perhaps even more importantly, paying youth means that youth don’t have to decide between serving on your board for free or working those hours at a job. For many youth, paid work is a necessity to cover their own expenses and to contribute to the family income. You increase your chances of engaging diverse youth voices if you give youth who need income that opportunity through your board.

For these reasons, organizations may also choose to pay youth even if adults in equivalent positions are not paid or no adults serve in equivalent positions.

This series of FAQ posts covers my answers to common questions about youth engagement.