Funky Dragon

This Y/AP wins the award for having the best name and mascot.  They are a program in Wales that seeks to educate people about youth involvement and participation, and are run by a Grand Council of youth democratically elected by youth.  They have lots of articles on youth and childhood covering topics from quality of life to youth apathy and activism in politics.  If nothing else, it grabbed my attention.

1-Stop Youth Participation Shop

This is a website that offers lots of tutorials and how-tos on Y/APs.  The best part is how it is packaged: as a grocery store offering lots of different ingrediants, with partnerships being the end result.  This seems to be a very introductory guide, and they don't actually seem to have any programs, but the website is cute and fun to navigate.  They get major points for creativity.

The Children's Society

The Children's Society is an organization that seems to primarily do research on the different facets of childhood in the U.K.,.  They want to improve relationships between adults and children and show that children are people with voices who are affected by global issues just as much as adults are.  They recently published an article on how children are the group most affected by recession.  Additionally, the group wants to identify the different components that make up a "good" childhood in order to promote a better life for children in the U.K. and around the globe.

Carnegie Young People Initiative

The Carnegie Young People Initiative is a group similar to Article 12 that wants to encourage youth to actively participate in societal decision making as an equal citizen.  They have written publications on everything from school reform to using the internet to involve youth in the democratic process.  It is unclear as to how much youth participation is involved in this group, as it seems to be more of an academic program similar to the Kellogg Foundation.  Even so, having looked through the publications, the stuff they are writing seems pretty good.

Article 12

Adam Fletcher gave me a list of Y/APs on his website, freechild.org, and I will probably post a bunch of those here. Article 12 is a youth-run organization in Scotland that seeks to inform youth about their civil rights and other legislation through easy to read explanations of acts and bills as well as through conferences, protests, and other learning activities.  The website describes itself as by youth and for youth.  The front page of their website also claims that they seek to encourage the world to exit the recession as a greener, fairer place.  

Do Something

DoSomething.org is a youth-oriented website (it's main page hawks the opportunity to win a date with Leonardo DiCaprio) with the goal of "using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline".  The website features drop-down boxes offering an easy way to choose what you want to do, what size of a group you want to do it in, and how often you want to volunteer.  Additionally, they give out both small and large grants to teens who have ideas for community projects.  While this website seems to be nationally based and not very hands-on, it is very easily accessible to youth of all ages and I like that it gives out $500 grants to kids as young as eleven.  

Youth Outreach for Victims of Violence

The National Crime Prevention Council is sponsoring a program called Youth Outreach for Victims of Violence.  Citing statistics that youth are twice as likely to be the victim of a violent crime as adults, the NCPC wants to mobilize "teams of youth and adults to create public awareness campaigns in their communities".  The goals for each specific site are to:

- Form a team of youth and adults to design and implement a new camapign

- Identify a specific teen victimization issue that it will address

- Plan and implement a project to educate teens on the issue.  These projects may be radio     public service announcements, poster campaigns, websites, workshops, school assemblies, and so on.

Youth on Board

The Boston Student Advisory Council that I mentioned earlier is working in conjunction with Youth on Board, a consulting firm that supports Youth/Adult Partnerships all over the country.  They meet with schools, governments, and other organizations to train people on how to more effectively interact with youth.  They provide electronic publications of all their workbooks and toolkits here. 

It seems they are doing good work, although they seem to be more of a consulting business than many of the organizations I have detailed in this blog.

Boston Student Advisory Council

I found this through another great post by Adam Fletcher.

The Boston Student Advisory Council is an advisory council composed of students from Boston city schools that represent high school youth on issues such as metal detectors in schools, cell phones, and classroom late policies.  It seems that this group is having great success.  The only unclear issue is how these student leaders are selected; are they chosen by administrative officials, or are they directly elected by the students?  This is a shining example of Youth-Adult Partnerships in the school, an area where adults are traditionally thought to wield all the power.

John Avery Boys and Girls Club

Over the past month, my class group has been working with the John Avery Boy's and Girls Club.  We went to the group with the intention of working on a book detailing the youth's ideas for changes they would like to see in the world or in their community (something along the lines of "If I Was President" or a related theme).  However, over the weeks, our conversation turned to a much different theme--the youth expressed frustration that they do not feel like the staff at the Boys and Girls Club listen to them.  We talked with the youth further about this and even drafted a letter to the Boys and Girls Club with them, requesting a Youth-Staff meeting to address concerns.

I would like to note that the John Avery Boys and Girls Club has been outstanding in allowing us to work with them--they have been nothing but courteous, nice, and extremely helpful.  Hopefully during our meeting we can help share some principles of Youth Adult Partnerships with them.

International Planned Parenthood Foundation

According to the slideshow I mentioned earlier, the IPPF adopted a  Youth Manifesto in 1998 that mandated that 20% of all governing councils be made up of youth members.  This would be a great example of getting youth involved in large, pre-existing organizations, but in my research I have not been able to find a standard that actually says this.  I have contacted the IPPF about this and will keep you updated.

YouthNet

Family Health International, YouthNet, and Advocates for Youth put together a great training slideshow for Youth Adult Partnerships.  While the information is great, what is of most use to me is the list of model programs at the end of the presentation.  I will be going through these model programs and posting links to and information about them shortly.

The Forum for Youth Investment

"The Forum partnered with the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Nonprofits to publish Youth-Adult Partnerships in Public Action: Principles, Organizational Culture and Outcomes. This study focuses on how organizations translate principles of youth engagement into practice and build a culture of partnership, as well as the outcomes – for young people, institutions and communities – that can result when they do. The research focuses on two organizations, Austin Voices for Education and Youth and Oasis Community IMPACT in Nashville, TN, but the lessons can help any organization committed to meaningful youth engagement advance their efforts in concrete ways."

The toolkit can be found for download at the link above.

The Freechild Project

The Freechild Project is another group advocating involving children and youth in social change projects, highlighting a clear distinction I have found throughout much of my research: all though there are many groups advocating for this model of activism, groups who actually practice this model are much harder to find.  They, too, have a list of principles of authentic youth involvement as a part of a much larger toolbox.  This website actually has a rather staggering list of resources, but unfortunately it does not have a list of organizations that follow its principles.

Additionally, YoungerWorld is a great blog connected to Freechild exploring the role of youth in society.

Advocates for Youth

Advocates for Youth is a D.C. based organization that advocates for "policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health". Their greatest partnership aspect seems to lie in their Youth Activist Network, which organizes groups of students on high school and college campuses in order to advance the goals in their Mission Statement.  They also have a dedicated section to criteria and standards for Youth-Adult Partnerships, but what made this particular write-up interesting to me was that they included what a youth adult partnership was not.  For example, youth-adult partnerships are not:

• Having young people around with no clear role to play
• Assigning youth only those tasks which adults do not want to fulfill
• Having youth make media appearances without any voice in developing the messages, programs, or policies that the youth are expected to talk about
• Having one youth on a board of directors or council to point to as "youth involvement

Communicating with teens

This is not directly related to youth-adult partnerships, but I found it interesting, especially since I am interested in the causes and solutions to teen depression.

Psychology Today published a post about rising rates of suicide and depression rates and how to help teens, with an emphasis on young women, cope with their struggles.  Although one might not always work with depresesd or anxious teens, they have some good suggestions for working with youth in any scenario, such as:

-Make no assumptions that you know what is really going on. Recognize that you are ignorant even though you'd love to believe you're not. Teenagers represent the most classic case of what you see is not what you get.

-Appreciate how different their world is from ours, and expose yourself to the culture your kids are immersed in. Look on it as an anthropological exploration. Ask kids what's hip and what they are paying attention to. Watch a half hour of MTV for a couple of weeks.

-Engage in activities together, which then tend to open up opportunities for communication and connection, rather than sitting down eyeball to eyeball.

Although many times it seems like common sense, sometimes while dealing with youth I get lost in the thought that since I am older and more mature I know what is best.  Empathy and understanding are the two most important qualities to embrace when it comes to connecting with peope of any age.

4-H Club

One of the biggest youth environmental programs in the country, the 4-H club, also holds the tenants of Youth-Adult Partnerships to be fundamental to its operation.  On its website, 4-H mentions belonging, mastery of skills, generosity, and independence as its four main tenants.  4-H encourages mastery of skills through going out and doing and practicing, not by being taught by an adult.  4-H offers independence so that youth can make their own decisions about what they want to do and can learn how to make good choices.  Of course, every 4-H chapter is run differently, so some are probably more partnership oriented than others, but it is a good sign that their National website encourages partnership instead of adult leadership.

I wonder if similar organizations, such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, can also be considered YAPs?  I know from my limited experience in the Boy Scouts that youth planned much of what went on, from the structure of meetings to the cooking of meals while camping.  Is the same true of the Girl Scouts?

Spectrum of Youth-Adult Relationships

Kenneth Jones and Daniel Perkins from the University of Pennsylvania published this article detailing the spectrum of youth-adult relationships.  While I was already familiar with the terms to youth, for youth, and with youth, I had never considered the term, "by youth".  This spectrum adds two additional topics, youth-led collaboration and youth-centered leadership, to a list that I previously thought had ended at Youth Adult Partnership.

The Peace Alliance

The U.S. Department of Peace has published a short toolkit for developing youth-adult partnerships with respect to the Student Peace Alliance.  While short and relatively undetailed compared to toolkits published by organizations such as the Innovation Center, it does contain some good pointers for creating partnerships.  Some highlights:

- Share the responsibility of leadership.  Provide guidance but avoid total control.

- Treat young people as equals.

- Listen to youth carefully.

Their rules are very good general guidelines for those that YAPs should follow.  

The Peace Alliance is an activist group campaigning for a Cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace.  The Student Peace Alliance is the youth wing of this group.

Center for Youth Development Journal

While this is more of an e-zine than an organization and it hasn't been updated since 2005, I nonetheless found it interesting as a source of information on YAPs.  The Center for Youth Development Journal is connected with the Center for Youth Development and has articles on youth as an agent for change going back as far as 2000.  Highlights on groups or models found in the Journal will follow shortly.

Meet Me There

Meet Me There is a new organization centered in Carrboro that aims to connect youth to the elderly.  Most youth do not maintain relationships with many older people other than their grandparents; this could help connect the newest generation to the oldest, allowing both parties to learn a great deal and benefit from the other's company.  Their programs include matching elementary school students with people in assisted-living homes and long term care as well as meetings to promote dialogue about racism using life histories as a tool for learning. My team considered working with Meet Me There but unfortunately could not because they do not yet have an established "community". Hopefully this idea takes off and creates positive intergenerational relationships around Chapel Hill.

Texas Association of Partners in Education (TAPE) + American Youth Works

One thing I have learned over the course of this semester is that it is very difficult to plan activities that truly are YAPs.  It is even harder to find groups that center their entire philosophy around partnerships.  However, this seems to be an example of two groups combining to create a very unique opportunity for students.

The Texas Association of Partners in Education (TAPE) and American Youth Works joined forces to put on a dinner for local business leaders.  As written on their website,TAPE connects volunteers and business leaders to local schools to enhance student success.  American Youth Works is an organization that provides high school and professional training to a largely minority and low-income student base.  It just so happens that one of their professional schools is a culinary schools; this is where their partnership gets interesting.

This dinner was organized, planned, and executed by students in the culinary schools.  These students provided local business leaders with a four-course meal.  This allowed the adults to experience the talents and gifts of youth and connect with them in conversation.  Who knows? Maybe the next time one of them needs a catering service, they will look to the AYW.

For more information, see this post bythe Search Institute.

Introduction

As an introduction, I suppose I should explain what the purpose of this blog is to any who might stumble across it.  Dr. Parker asked me to compile a sort of directory of Youth-Adult Partnerships (YAPs) and I figured that one of the best ways to keep track of the information I found, as well as update her and the rest of the class in real-time, was to create a blog where I placed everything interesting that I found.  I am a very disorganized person, so the likelihood of Google's servers crashing is much smaller than the chance of me losing all my research over the course of this semester.  Hopefully it can also serve other professionals working in this field or anyone else who might want to explore this topic.

Welcome, and I hope you find the things that I write about here useful and/or interesting.