Chapter Three: Collaborating for Change

"Communities should not just sit back and assume that their youth are being taken care of. This means they need to have someone or some agency that attends to the community menu of programs, who has responsibility for oversight and coordination, and perhaps even helps youth get connected to community programs that suit their needs and abilities." (National Research Council, p. 117)

Every big city and small town across America has resources to help promote Positive Youth Development. Some of the most obvious—schools, recreation centers, and public housing facilities—offer direct services to whole neighborhoods of youth. And youth-serving organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA provide meaningful programming to millions of young people during the afterschool hours. But youth development doesn't stop there. Everyone in the community has a role to play in making sure that all youth have opportunities to flourish: State and local elected officials, the media, businesses, arts and culture organizations, law enforcement, neighbors, parents, friends, and the youth themselves.

It's not enough for everyone to know his or her role, however. To make sure that every young person develops mentally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually, all the different actors need to work together, not just to weave a safety net, but to build a springboard from which youth can thrive. Most important, the youth themselves need to be right in the middle of the construction, designing, implementing, and running the programs that lead to their own brighter future.

Consider the following youth-led project. What partnerships were undertaken? What opportunities for collaborations did she miss?

At 14 years old, Deborah (Chi-Chi) Hsieh decided that something needed to be done to improve the prospects of the largely Hispanic, low-income community down the road from her home in Chandler, Arizona.

"This sounds kind of bad, but I drove by it every time I went to the mall," said Hsieh, now an energetic college junior with a brilliant smile. "You can't help but notice the difference. In the middle of all these affluent communities, it goes from a big road down to a one-lane road, and there were no street lights, just stop signs."

Her first stop was to contact the local Chamber of Commerce, which encouraged her to visit the community center that housed an after-hours high school for working teens. One of the first things she noticed was a pile of broken computer equipment in the corner of the lone classroom.

"I was really surprised, since every room in my high school had a television set and at least one computer," she said. "They were still writing up reports by hand, which is good for penmanship, I guess, but not necessarily very good for job skills."

After enlisting the support of the manager of the facility and its only teacher, she set about trying to upgrade the computer lab. Her computer engineer father pitched in by recruiting some of his colleagues to help rehabilitate the equipment. When most of the computers proved to be unsalvageable, Hsieh had to look elsewhere, though not far. The Best Buy down the road happened to be soliciting proposals for its youth grant program, "Now That's a Great Idea." Hsieh's proposal won, which allowed her to buy five computers, a scanner, and a printer.

During class hours, the highschoolers used the computers. After school, Hsieh and a group of volunteers from local high schools put together programs for elementary and middle schoolers. They offered typing and word processing, and an open lab time to allow neighborhood kids to come in and type up school papers. Hsieh's mother served as the adult supervision.

"One of the younger kids, when she first came in, went up and hugged the computer," Hsieh said.

During the summer, the group of volunteers recruited preschoolers who were on the waiting list for the local Head Start program. Using online materials, they offered a curriculum that taught letters, numbers, shapes, and colors, as well as some computer activities. The program became so popular that a local newscaster broadcast a lengthy story about it on the five o'clock news. The publicity brought in enough donations to cover the rent and utilities at the facility.

Hsieh said that the experience was a constant challenge for the volunteers, with language barriers, troubled children, and young people that would disappear for weeks at a time without notice. But their perseverance paid off—the Boys and Girls Clubs eventually stepped in and took over the program, promising it a long life.

Collaborating With Youth

While not every youth will want to commit to an intensive project like Hsieh's, many have similar capabilities. Each day, more and more adults across the country are discovering ways to harness the energy and vitality of young people for leadership roles. Youth make programming decisions. They manage projects. They recruit new clients or volunteers. They present their work to the public, the media, and government entities. In short, there is little that young people cannot do.

What's more, youth benefit greatly from leadership opportunities. They build crucial self-esteem and self-confidence at the same time as they develop professional and social skills that will help them for the rest of their lives. In the community, their work helps dispel myths that young people are not capable or reliable enough to lead.

Youth leadership doesn't just benefit young people, though. Given opportunities to lead, youth can:

• infuse an organization with energy, creativity, and positive thinking
• make services more effective and accountable to youth
• bring new clients and volunteers from their peer and family networks

Though the payoff is large, working with youth does require some extra time, effort, and expense. For comprehensive advice on youth-adult partnering, consult the resource list at the end of this section. To get started, some things to consider include:

 Resources on Youth Involvement and Youth-Adult Partnerships

14 Points: Successfully Involving Youth in Decision Making. Author: Youth on Board. 2001. Available from 58 Day St., Somerville, MA 02144; (617) 623-9900 x1242; www.youthonboard.org.

An Asset Builder's Guide to Youth Leadership. Authors: J. Griffin-Wiesner, et al. 1999. Available from Search Institute, Banks Building, 615 First Avenue, NE, Suite 125, Minneapolis, MN 55413; (800) 888-7828; si@search-institute.org; www.search-institute.org.

Building Community: A Tool Kit for Youth and Adult in Charting Assets and Creating Change. Authors: The Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development and National 4-H Council. 2001. Available from the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 502, Takoma Park, MD 20912; (301) 270-1700; fax: (301) 270-5900; info@theinnovationcenter.org; www.theinnovationcenter.org.

Promoting Youth Participation. Author: National League of Cities. Available from the National League of Cities; www.nlc.org.

Working Shoulder to Shoulder: Stories and Strategies of Youth-Adult Partnerships That Succeed. Author: Deborah Fisher. 2004. Available from Search Institute, Banks Building, 615 First Avenue, NE, Suite 125, Minneapolis, MN 55413; (800) 888-7828; si@search-institute.org; www.search-institute.org.

Youth-Adult Partnerships: Training Manual. Author: Youth Leadership Institute. Available from 246 First Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 836-9160; www.yli.org.

Youth Involvement Research and Practice Agenda. Author: The Innovation Center. 2003. Available from the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 502, Takoma Park, MD 20912; (301) 270-1700; fax: (301) 270-5900; info@theinnovationcenter.org; www.theinnovationcenter.org.

Youth on Board: Why and How to Involve Young People in Organizational Decision-Making. Author: Youth on Board. 2001. Available from www.youthonboard.org

Youth Voice: A Guide for Engaging Youth in Leadership and Decision-Making in Service Learning Programs. Author: Points of Light Foundation. 2001. Available from www.servicelearning.org.

Collaborating With Other Community and Government Actors

When you are working to improve the lives of young people, virtually everyone around you is a potential collaborator. Here are just some of the reasons you should consider developing relationships with others in your community:

• Your youth will have better access to services in the community.
• Your project will be more attractive to funders if you can show that you have community support and existing networks.
• You can take on bigger projects when you are working with people who have different expertise and access to resources in the community.
• Your work can be easier, quicker, and more cost-effective when you are working with others rather than competing with them.
   
• In a cooperative environment, your staff are less likely to get frustrated and quit.
• By working with others, you are setting a good example for youth.

Collaboration often means thinking creatively about how to maximize positive experiences for young people in your community while minimizing redundancies and streamlining costs. For example, if you can't afford to hire a job counselor for your youth (or even if you can), encourage some big employers from your community to give presentations or workshops on resume writing and interviewing. Have faith-based organizations from the neighborhood invite your youth to their socials or community service projects. Ask members of community arts groups to conduct drawing, music, writing, or dance classes for youth.
 

The Family and Youth Services Bureau is just one of the government agencies actively working to promote collaboration. The Bureau has awarded demonstration grants to some State and local governments interested in fostering community-wide PYD efforts. Grantees were first charged with building collaborations that promote PYD among State government agencies. More recently, they expanded their collaborations to include local organizations and agencies. Here are some of the projects now under way:

In Phoenix, Arizona, the Governor's Division for Community and Youth Development has joined forces with the Murphy School District and other community groups like Camp Fire USA, the Wheel Council, and Neighborhood Partners, Inc., to improve outcomes for youth in the 8-square-mile school district, which is also home to a jail, a garbage dump, and an interstate highway. In an initial meeting between grantees and fifth to eighth graders, students asked what services they would be getting from the program. Grantees responded by asking the kids how they wanted to get involved in improving their community. "These kids are used to being recipients, rather than fully empowered," a coordinator said. "We tell them that the grant won't happen if they don't make it happen." A community Halloween party warmed the kids up for future civic activities, and parents, though wary of broken promises, have gotten on board.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a collaboration between the Governor's Office of the Workforce Commission and local agency Career Builders has focused on providing education, mentoring, job training, recreational activities, and life skills for school children in a community where a third of ninth graders are dropping out and 11,000 health-related jobs have gone unfilled for lack of competent workers. "Human resources people have told us that our youth aren't trainable, that they don't have ‘soft' skills like showing up on time, being pleasant, etcetera," a Career Builder coordinator said. In order to build those skills earlier, the collaborators decided to focus a wide range of community programs and services in one elementary, one middle, and one high school in the same neighborhood, to provide youth with intensive support throughout their school years.

In the Grove Hall section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, local youth are employed by collaboration partners as Youth Policy Associates, going into the community to conduct forums and help the community come up with solutions to its own problems. One of their first initiatives was to clean up a park that had been over run with garbage and drug paraphernalia. In the meantime, project collaborators the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Roxbury Boys and Girls Clubs, and the Youth & Police Partnership Program have worked with the juvenile justice system to pinpoint troubled youth. After discovering that 472 neighborhood kids accounted for more than 11,000 criminal cases, collaborators have started to focus on providing activities and support for those youth.

For more information on these projects and others funded by FYSB, go to www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb and click on "Special Initiatives" under the heading "Youth Programs."

As with youth partnerships, community collaborations have their challenges. Programs that are used to struggling for funding are sometimes territorial. Other groups have bureaucracies that maybe difficult to manage. And still others may have different ideas about how project goals should be met. The following are some things to think about as you begin to develop your collaborative environment.

Making Collaborations Work

• Test the political climate for receptiveness to your project by speaking informally with community leaders.
• Consider how your efforts will be sustainable over time (in terms of both financial and human resources). Bring many different stakeholders—preferably those with decisionmaking authority—to the table, including those you are planning to serve.
• Make sure all participants share a common perception of the issue and similar goals for addressing it.
• Define the key terms so that everyone is using them in the same way.
• Build personal as well as professional relationships with your partners. Meet face to face.
• Air out and discuss each member's agenda throughout the collaboration.
• Select leadership and define what responsibilities it will have.
• Agree on rules, even if that means agreeing not to have formal rules.
• Set specific goals. Think in terms of both short-term and long-term outcomes.
• Conduct needs assessments, but don't use them as an excuse not to move forward.
• Set clear milestones and assign specific tasks to reach your objectives.
• Agree on and enforce deadlines.
• Formally define "done." Don't let a collaboration go on past its usefulness.
• Evaluate and readjust, as necessary.

Too many coalition meetings on your calendar? Consider how the groups can be merged to more efficiently serve the community's goals.

Collaboration Resources

Building Community: A Tool Kit For Youth & Adults in Charting Assets and Creating Change. Authors: The Innovation Center for Community Youth Development and the National 4-H Council. 2001. Available from www.theinnovationcenter.org.

Collaborating to Promote Positive Youth Development. Author: Family and Youth Services Bureau; Administration on Children, Youth and Families; Administration for Youth and Families; Department of Health and Human Services. May 2006 issue of FYSB Update. Available from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth, ncfy.acf.hhs.gov.

Collaboration: What Makes It Work, 2nd Edition. Authors: Paul Mattessich, Marta Murray-Close, Barbara Monsey. 2001 Available from the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, www.wilder.org/pubs/collab_wmiw/index.html.

Community Guide to Helping America's Youth. Author: Helping America's Youth. 2005. Available at www.helpingamericasyouth.gov.

Creating Communities of Promise: Mobilizing The Collective Power of Communities To Enrich the Lives of Children and Youth. Author: America's Promise. 2004. Available from www.americaspromise.org.