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.