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.