Appendix C
Implementing a Youth Development Approach: An Organizational Assessment Questionnaire
The following questionnaire may be used by organizational leaders to begin assessing their organization's readiness to implement a youth development approach to serving young people. The assessment tool contains questions under three sections: (A) organizational development, (B) programs and services, and (C) collaboration.
A. | Organizational Development | |
---|---|---|
1. | What is the organizational vision or mission with regard to implementing a youth development approach? Who was involved in creating that vision or mission? | |
2. | What has the organization done to ensure that all programs are based on a youth development rather than a problem-centered approach? | |
3. | What will be necessary to help staff and board members shift their thinking about youth from a "deficit based" to an "attribute based" approach? | |
4. | What is the staff and board members' understanding of the life development process, and what has the organization done to help them understand their own ongoing development? | |
5. | How has the organization trained staff and board members about the adolescent development process? | |
6. | What has the organization done with regard to examining conditions that exist within the community, how young people experience those conditions, and how negative conditions might be improved? | |
7. | What has the organization done to remove the barriers to healthy youth development that exist within the neighborhood, community, and Nation? |
B. | Programs and Services | |
---|---|---|
1. | Does the organization offer young people programs that do the following: | |
a. | Provide a full range of services and opportunities? | |
b. | Enable young people to develop new skills? | |
c. | Teach personal life skills, such as problem solving, making decisions, setting and achieving goals, and creating and maintaining harmonious interpersonal relationships? | |
d. | Connect young people to caring adults (non-staff) and then support those connections? | |
e. | Support young people's educational experience? | |
f. | Provide academic and employment preparation and internships ? | |
g. | Enable young people to consider and plan for their future? | |
h. | Address the general problems of adolescence or specific difficulties without labeling youth as "troubled"? | |
i. | Mix young people from various backgrounds? | |
j. | Expose youth to new events, circumstances, opportunities, and locations? | |
k. | Teach young people about what to expect from, or how to handle, real-life situations such as planning for the future, getting married, having children, maintaining employment, developing hobbies or special interests, celebrating successes, or adjusting to loss? | |
l. | Place young people in supported leadership positions through which they are exposed to the challenges and satisfactions of collaborating with others to explore options, make decisions, and achieve positive outcomes? | |
m. | Connect youth to the community through special projects or linkages to on-going community efforts or activities? | |
2. | Does the organization offer guidance to youth about how to take advantage of services and opportunities (provided through the organization, through other agencies, and in the larger community)? | |
3. | How does the organization address young people's need to take part in activities that are functional, educational, and fun? | |
4. | What characteristics demonstrate that a youth development approach underlies program efforts? | |
5. | How are the results of program efforts to support adolescent development measured and shared? |
C. | Outreach and Education | |
---|---|---|
1. | What is the prevailing youth policy (State or local), and how has the organization worked to inform the policy process with regard to youth development? | |
2. | How has the organization worked with the community to create and communicate a vision of what is necessary for the positive development of young people? | |
3. | How has the organization addressed the culturally based negative feelings about adolescents? How will it do so in the future? | |
4. | How has the organization used the media to counteract the current projection of negative images about youth that shape public opinion and therefore public policy? |
D. | Collaborating with Other Youth Service Providers, Young People, and the Community | |
1. | How does the agency collaborate with other youth service providers to develop strategies for moving toward a youth development approach to helping young people within the community? the State? the region? | |
2. | How would other youth service providers characterize the agency's contributions to improving youth policy and practice? | |
3. | What has the organization done to truly involve youth, families, and community members in designing and evaluating programs and developing strategies for rebuilding communities? | |
4. | What types of situations has the organization created in which young people are valued and included? | |
5. | How will the organization help the community shift from thinking about youth from a "deficit based" to an "attribute-based" approach? | |
6. | How will the organization help the community to understand and value adolescent development as part of a lifelong developmental process? | |
7. | What real outcomes have resulted from the organization's collaborative efforts in the past? | |
8. | What real outcomes is the organization working toward through its current collaborative efforts? |