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.