Celebrating Five Years!

It’s been 5 years since I launched my own business supporting authentic youth engagement as a new normal for youth-serving agencies and organizations. And what a challenging five years it’s been for us all!

Amidst the challenges, I am proud to have partnered with a dozen clients. My diverse clients, from county agencies to national nonprofits, have achieved meaningful and authentic progress toward true partnership with youth in their work. 

I’ve worked with clients to evaluate the reality of their current youth engagement efforts, facilitate groups of youth and adults to plan and implement deeper youth engagement, envision and create new youth engagement-focused positions staffed by people with relevant lived expertise, coach key youth engagement staff, and so many other valuable and challenging projects. 

Here are some ways I’ve helped previous clients that might be helpful for your organization.

Evaluation and Planning

• Realistic evaluation of youth engagement in your organization and/or programs.

• In-depth audit of your organization’s current youth engagement.

• Research, reports, and presentations on best practices or cutting edge pilots for youth engagement in your field.

• Facilitation of community conversations or short-term advisory groups engaging youth and adults, plus staff and leadership, in creating recommendations for your organization’s youth engagement.

• Strategic planning based on your realistic readiness for advancing youth engagement.

Ongoing, Flexible Implementation Support 

• Routine meetings with key staff, leaders, and/or oversight groups to maintain momentum toward youth engagement goals.

• Periodic evaluation check-ins with written reports, crafted for internal and/or public use.

• Documentation of progress and success for use in grant proposals, conference workshops, or other public communications. 

Training and Professional Development

• Flexible, live training for staff and leadership on robust and authentic youth engagement including:

• authentically partnering with youth in individual and group interactions, 

• identifying the experiences of power and oppression by youth and families interacting with your organization,

• how to disagree or say “no” to youth in partnership.

• Support drafting or revising orientation and training materials.

• One-to-one coaching of staff or leaders with direct responsibility for youth engagement. 

• Facilitating groups of young leaders to co-draft recommendations for increased youth engagement within your field.

Doing Better: Youth and Adults Building a Legacy

Youth with histories of involvement in the youth legal system are partnering with adults to realize a vision of community that centers healing, restoration, health, and whole person wellbeing. This community - The Hive - is coming to life in Richmond, Virginia with the help of adult staff, partner experts, and youth leaders.

Seth Hill, President of the Youth Advisory Board, says “this is like nothing I’ve ever been a part of.” Some of the youth leaders form the Youth Advisory Board (YAB). The YAB is a youth-led team that leans on adult partners, including the adults forming The Hive organization and the amazing team at Designing Justice + Designing Spaces for relevant expertise. 

The Youth Advisory Board is structured to support leadership by each of the members, with roles like Motivator and Check-in Leader. The group is diverse in age, ranging from 13 to 21 years old.

The Hive’s Keys to Successful Youth-Adult Partnership

“Build at the speed of trust” 

Envisioning a new community takes a lot of work, and the staff and youth conceptualizing The Hive are aware of the importance of the legacy they are building. However, they focus time and energy on building and maintaining trust between youth and adults, among youth, and among adults. Quoting adrienne marie brown, Gina Lyles, the former Engagement Director of Performing Statistics and now Executive Director of The Hive, called this focus “building at the speed of trust.”

The YAB began during 11 weeks of full-time relationship-building and visioning during the summer. The foundation of trust, communication, and youth leadership built over that focused period continues to shore up the group as it moves forward. 

Adults crafting The Hive and partnering with the YAB also have strong foundational relationships built over five years working together at parent organization, Performing Statistics, and share a common dedication to authentic youth-adult partnership. 

Photo Credit: Images from The Hive's Youth Advisory Board bus tour. Photos by Mark Strandquist, courtesy of the Performing Statistics project.

Meet youth where they are

Seth says a key to youth-adult partnership is to “try to understand people’s trauma and accept them as they come.” Staff have a plan for supporting skills and knowledge development among youth on the YAB, but they keep that plan flexible. Meeting youth where they are, both when they join the group and each day, is central to The Hive’s model of building trust. 

Both youth and adults have space to show up as their authentic selves, even if that means the day’s planned agenda needs to change. Gina says youth rely on adults to be our authentic selves and use our emotional intelligence. “It can’t be about a quota. We are all human beings, and we all need to be safe,” says Gina.

This also means recognizing that youth have their own workloads and will sometimes need flexibility, just like adults. Now that school is in session, the YAB meets much less frequently and at a time that works for all the youth and their diverse schedules. And for those youth no longer in school who can take on more work, adult staff drive work opportunities to them. The group keeps in touch between meetings using a group text app. This step back in frequency is only possible because of the strength of relationships built during the summer.  

Effectively share resources 

The Hive contracts with YAB members as consultants and pays YAB members $25 per hour. Perhaps more important, they make their internal accounting practices fit youth needs. If a youth is unbanked and needs to receive cash, the staff accept receipts for purchases back from the youth for accounting purposes. The Hive also has a separate youth employment structure called the Youth Ambassador Squad. These youth are part-time employees of The Hive, with their salaries accounted and planned for with all other staff in the organization’s budget.  

During the summer, YAB members also received transportation and food support in ways that met their needs. Youth who didn’t have access to their own transportation could get a carshare ride when they needed it. When programming happened during mealtimes, the staff ordered food for everyone. The flexibility and youth-centered resource sharing practices push funders to recognize the humanity of youth working with The Hive. 

“Living for each other”

The Hive team, including the YAB and the staff, are in this together. When conflict arises, the group turns to restorative and community-building practices. Exclusion from the group or similar punishments are never the answer. Gina points out, “if you walk around feeling like no one cares about you, it’s tough to care about anyone else.” 

The group also makes sacrifices for each other. For staff, that means meeting with youth outside of school and regular work hours. 

Photo Credit: Images from The Hive's Youth Advisory Board bus tour. Photos by Mark Strandquist, courtesy of the Performing Statistics project.

What’s Next for The Hive

As The Hive continues to develop and formalize into a stand-alone organization, the YAB wants to educate the community and the public about true justice. The YAB worked with The Conciliation Lab on a recent virtual intergenerational conversation called “Devising Justice” and will be doing community outreach events in an art-wrapped bus.

To learn more about The Hive, call 804-554-3527 or email info@thehivemovement.org. You can visit their website at www.thehivemovement.org and follow along on Instagram and Twitter at @thehivemovement or Facebook at @thehivemovement804.

Let’s schedule an introductory call to discuss how you can implement these best practices in your own organization or agency.

Do Better: Anti-Oppression in Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare

Oppression takes away people’s power, including the power of self-determination, and relies on the unjust use of power to control another person or group. The various government systems with direct control over the lives of children and youth - the child welfare and juvenile justice systems especially -  routinely and completely strip youth of their power. This Youth Justice Action Month, I call on leaders on child-impacting systems to reduce oppression in their systems by centering youth-adult partnership.

Systems ignore or defy the self-determination of Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ youth, especially, and it’s the rare system actor that asks any youth what they need or want. I’ve frequently heard from youth that adults don’t care why they make certain choices; adults just punish them. That youth feel that way defies any goals of accountability, protection, or behavior change these systems claim to accomplish.

White supremacy baked into the justice system, child welfare agencies, and the courts creates a culture in those organizations focused on the control of Black bodies and families. Judges use incarceration in youth jails to “protect” Black girls who fail to follow judicial commands despite dozens of studies documenting the trauma and abuse youth incur in these facilities. 

Forced boarding schools, which only recently ended, removed approximately one half of all Indigenous children from their families, communities, and culture for more than 100 years. These “schools” forced cultural assimilation to white culture using abuse and neglect and created generational trauma that the U.S. has not even begun to address.

Law enforcement practices put LGBTQ youth into the juvenile justice system at higher rates than their peers and often for survival behaviors adapted by the youth in the face of family rejection. And, once there, the juvenile justice system uses solitary confinement to “protect” LGBTQ youth rather than create supportive, effective responses to their needs, and still fails to keep them safe from high rates of sexual and physical abuse. 

How can adults in these systems partner with youth both to determine the future of their own lives and that of the systems that control so much of their lives?

Youth-adult partnership is a decision-making structure where youth and adults come to the table together, identify an issue or question together, and apply their unique skills, knowledge and assets to solving it together. Everyone shares power, accountability, equal supports for their participation, and a common language. 

At the individual level, adults in the justice and child welfare systems can approach youth as human beings. Take a step back from day-to-day interactions with youth and ask yourself if you would treat an adult the same way. Approach meetings with youth as problem-solving sessions where you work as partners. 

Systems can also do more to meet the basic levels of youth engagement required by federal law. Congress, an institution not known for its power sharing with young people, has long prioritized youth-adult partnership in juvenile justice decisions. Federal law mandates youth with lived experience to serve as equal voting members on State Advisory Groups, advisory bodies that distribute federal grants and inform juvenile justice practices in states. Other federal laws and policies require adults in the justice system to work with LGTBQ youth to identify the safest placements for them. However, evidence demonstrates that states so far have failed to meet these requirements.

Models exist within the juvenile justice and child welfare fields of agencies and organizations centering youth-adult partnership. I’m excited to have worked with some of them, like the Center for Children’s Law and Policy and National Association of Counsel for Children, or learned from them over my career, and am ready to support your agency or organization when it is ready to do more.

How Ready is Your Organization to Build and Sustain Youth-Adult Partnership? Use my new Initial Self-Evaluation and Organizational Audit to find out.

I’ve experienced on many occasions that the most impactful part of supporting a systems change process was when I asked new questions of an organization and facilitated dedicated discussions when everyone answered those questions. All of our organizations are moving all day, every day toward our goals, focused on doing all the things that make the organization a success. It’s incredibly challenging in the midst of that rush to lead deep systems change for ourselves, and deep systems change is exactly what’s required to embed authentic youth-adult partnership into your organization’s governance and operations. 

My Organizational Audit of Readiness to Build and Sustain Youth-Adult Partnership will ask your organization new questions about its connections to young people impacted by your decisions, will reveal alignment between your talk and your walk, and will recommend immediate actions to build on your strengths and turn around weaknesses.

Early Self-Evaluation

I recommend every organization, even ones not interested in a full audit, conduct a self-evaluation of readiness and interest in youth-adult partnership. Is your organization at the starting line of youth-adult partnership? Are you just getting started on a Couch to 5K? Or are you ready to run the marathon of systems change? This self-evaluation forms the first step of the audit process. 

What does an Organizational Audit include?

When you commit to an audit, your organization and I will partner on several steps following the self-evaluation. 

First, we will conduct listening sessions with your organization’s staff and leadership, the governing body if you have one (i.e. a Board of Directors), community or system partners, and youth impacted by your organization’s decisions. We will combine what we hear from all of these stakeholders to form a 360 degree view of your organization’s current readiness to embark on youth-adult partnership.

Second, we will interview a few key members of each stakeholder group. Our goal for these interviews will be additional clarity and a deeper understanding of what we learned in the surveys and listening sessions.  

Third, we will review your organization’s governing and operations documents. These documents reflect both your organization’s origin story and how you carry out your day-to-day work. Do the documents you use every day support your goals? Do they build mutual respect and trust among stakeholders?

I will then provide a written audit report to you, which will outline how ready your organization truly is to embark on youth-adult partnership and how to build on what you have, provide helpful comparisons to peer organizations, and recommend next steps. And we will work together to share the report with everyone who contributed to our learning and with the public. This sharing step is crucial to all future work since it creates accountability within and outside the organization.

I welcome introductory conversations with any organization considering an audit, and I’m happy to review and provide feedback on results of self-evaluations even if you are not considering a full audit. Let’s talk about it!

Doing Better: CCLP is Developing a Model for Youth and Community Engagement in Legal System Reforms

The Center for Children’s Law and Policy (CCLP) invested significant resources to evaluate its own success as an advocacy and policy reform organization and is applying lessons learned, especially about youth and community engagement, to ongoing reform efforts.

The evaluation measured the process and outcomes of CCLP’s Law Enforcement Leadership for Equity initiative, a year-long partnership with four diverse law enforcement agencies. CCLP and the agencies sought to advance equity and reduce system involvement for youth of color through policy reforms. Although youth and community engagement was a stated core component of the process, agencies made little progress authentically engaging youth or communities of color and subsequently did not achieve their racial equity goals.

CCLP will share the evaluation publicly through two reports, one documenting lessons learned from the technical assistance process and the other completing the picture of progress and results achieved by each law enforcement agency.

Committing to an evaluation included multiple hours on the part of staff, as well as time from leaders and community partners of each law enforcement agency, to participate in meetings and interviews, as well as provide historical and quantitative data. CCLP also received financial support to evaluate its own work from a foundation, something I rarely see and wish more foundations would prioritize.

I’ve been consistently impressed with CCLP’s willingness to receive constructive criticism and dedication to applying what they learn moving forward. Already, CCLP applied lessons and recommendations for more authentic youth and community engagement to ongoing work with the Baltimore City Police Department and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.

Evaluation Services Supported Learning and Evolution

I provided a robust evaluation of the process and outcomes of CCLP’s technical assistance and the policy reforms achieved by each department, along with recommendations for future progress. My evaluation process included developing measures of CCLP’s target outcomes, collecting and analyzing quantitative data from the departments, as well as collecting and applying qualitative data through interviews and surveys with diverse stakeholders.

As it was the weakest area of progress by CCLP and each of the four departments, I provided the bulk of my recommendations on advancing youth and community engagement in future policy reform efforts by law enforcement agencies and their national policy partners, like CCLP. “Laura’s clear and convincing evaluation and well-founded recommendations drew a clear line for us between the crucial importance of authentic youth and community engagement and achieving the measurable results we seek through our work. Real, robust youth and community engagement can lead to greater equity in justice system reforms,” reports Tiana Davis, CCLP’s Policy Director for Equity and Justice.

I am now documenting more advanced youth and community engagement work by CCLP and Baltimore, with an eye toward measuring how authentic engagement supports better racial equity outcomes in the future.

Next Steps for Greater Legal System Reforms

This evaluation correlated strong partnership with those most affected by reforms with measurable success toward equity and fairness in the legal system. Experts and policy makers at all levels of the juvenile and criminal justice fields have long paid lip service to youth and community engagement, especially with people most impacted by the system. However, efforts to authentically partner with people charged or convicted of crimes, incarcerated people, and/or victims of crime have routinely fallen short of rhetoric.

Authentic engagement of affected people takes time, people, money and leadership. Funders, national or local policy organizations and agencies within the legal system will need to apply the lessons of authentic youth and community engagement to begin achieving the actual results long-promised but rarely achieved.

Doing Better: NACC is an Emerging Model for Youth Engagement in a Key Profession

I’ve had the pleasure of working with the National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC) since the very early days of my business. The legal representation of children and youth in child welfare cases is one of the most important spaces for authentic youth-adult partnership, but, as is common across youth-serving systems, has traditionally prioritized adult-led decisions.

Over the last two years, NACC has dedicated significant resources to becoming a national model of youth engagement for lawyers representing children in child welfare cases. NACC’s strides toward centering youth engagement in its organizational culture and structure include:

• Creating a new part-time Youth Coordinator position and rapidly advancing it to a full-time Youth Engagement Management position;

• Hiring a person with lived experience in the child welfare system to fill that role, reporting directly to the Executive Director;

• Launching a youth advisory board, now called the National Advisory Council on Children’s Legal Representation (Advisory Council), that actively engages and pays young people from across the country to educate legal professionals, co-develop advocacy platforms with legal staff, and develop content for training the child welfare legal field;

• Fundraising to support and sustain its youth engagement efforts; and

• Training its Board of Directors in youth engagement and developing a Board Youth Engagement Committee.

In addition, NACC will soon undertake a strategic plan “refresh” and will partner with the Advisory Council on a revision of NACC’s mission, vision, and policy priorities.

Achieving Better Results through Youth-Adult Partnership

A key example of how NACC now partners with young leaders in its central programming is the process for revising NACC’s Recommendations on the Representation of Children. Changing a process that was exclusively adult-informed in the past, NACC’s Legal Director and the Advisory Council co-designed the framework and priorities for the Recommendations. NACC contributed to the success of the partnership by engaging a human-centered design facilitator to support the process. Youth leaders report seeing their voice reflected in the project.

Effectively engaging youth in this important guidance for the legal field not only means that lawyers may do their jobs better on daily basis, but also demonstrated to the youth leaders on the Advisory Council and to the adults on staff that this model of youth-adult partnership works. NACC’s Legal Director Allison Green says, “Advisory Council members gave us new insights and prioritized important changes to the Recommendations that would not have happened otherwise and will impact child welfare practice for years to come.”

One Key to Success: A Champion

NACC demonstrates how a champion at the highest level of an organization is key to this type of culture and structure shift. NACC’s bylaws long required it to have a youth advisory board, but that requirement went unfulfilled until Executive Director Kim Dvorchak committed to make it happen. “Educating the legal profession about authentic youth engagement is a key part of our work moving forward, and we must serve as a model of youth engagement to be effective advocates and educators,” says Kim. Kim has also led the organization beyond the letter of the requirement toward embedding youth engagement throughout its core operations, including at its annual conference and through partnership between the Advisory Council and Board of Directors.

My Partnership with NACC

Early on, I supported NACC’s youth engagement goals by conducting a landscape scan of youth-adult partnership models in the child welfare field. Kim and I then applied learning from the scan to develop and implement the Youth Coordinator and the Advisory Council selection process, including position descriptions, an interview process, and selection criteria. Bringing in the inaugural Youth Coordinator and group of Advisory Council members were key steps to achieving NACC’s overall youth engagement goals. The intentional, robust process we used took time but has made a tremendous difference in the Coordinator and Council’s success.

I have also provided one-on-one coaching to the Youth Coordinator, and now Youth Engagement Manager, Cristal Ramirez since she joined the team at NACC. Cristal comments, “Coaching sessions with Laura are always helpful. She asks questions that help me develop new ideas and helps me build the confidence to own the unique, worthy professional I am.”

Together, Cristal and I provided an introductory training on authentic youth engagement to NACC’s Board of Directors. The training established a common language and set of expectations for authentic youth engagement among the Board members, all of whom came into the training with diverse levels of knowledge and practice.

What’s Next for NACC’s Youth Engagement

NACC continues to deepen its commitment to partnering with the Advisory Council on driving its advocacy efforts and education resources for the legal community.

In coming years, I anticipate NACC will work to expand its foundational structure and sustain a robust culture of youth engagement. So far, grants and contracts have funded this work, which may become more challenging as philanthropy is often less excited about funding to sustain than it is funding to create. Thus, shifting organizational revenue to more stable sources may prove key to retaining youth engagement structures built over the last two years.

Further, NACC will need to expand a culture committed to authentic youth engagement from its core of committed staff and Board of Directors to its nationwide membership. Already, NACC surveys have shown increased interest in youth engagement among their membership of child welfare law practitioners; how that interest translates into true power sharing and implementation remains to be seen.

I am excited to see NACC’s leadership on youth-adult partnership for the child legal representation profession continue and deepen in years to come!

Doing Better: More Organizations Introduce Staff to Youth-Adult Partnership

Just as youth need support to engage in youth-adult partnership, adults need to build knowledge and skills for authentic partnership. Over the last year, I facilitated training for multiple organizations seeking to advance youth-adult partnership.

Two organizations stood out by committing the time and resources to train their full staff. Establishing common language and understanding of youth engagement across the entire staff supports everyone in achieving authentic engagement. Monroe Circuit Court Juvenile Probation Office and FHI 360’s National Institute for Work and Learning (NIWL) trained frontline workers who engage directly with youth and their managers, plus NIWL included communication and accounting staff. 

Diverse Audiences Stand to Benefit from Youth-adult Partnership 

Each of these organizations works with youth in unique ways, but they share the potential to benefit from implementing youth-adult partnership both in day-to-day interactions with youth and in governance.

FHI 360 NIWL is an international partner for several employers and workforce development sites serving youth and young adults. Two of NIWL’s programs also convene young adult leadership councils from these local sites, partnering with youth leaders to shape the programs that affect them. NIWL staff benefit from opportunities to strengthen youth-adult partnership within the leadership councils and to identify new ways to support youth engagement for the sites they serve.

Monroe Circuit Court juvenile probation officers and agency leadership can apply youth-adult partnership in their day-to-day administration of probation and to reimagine the balance of power between probation or court officers and youth on probation and their families. 

Youth-Adult Partnership and Anti-Oppression Training 

My introductory youth-adult partnership training for these organizations focused on my four principles for authentic youth-adult partnership - shared power, shared accountability, shared resources, and shared language. I customized each training based on the goals of the organization, time available with their staff, and pre-existing knowledge and capacity of participants. 

According to pre- and post-training evaluations, my training increased participants’ capacity to identify adultism and authentic youth engagement and gave participants tools to think differently about oppression and power in their work.  Trainees found particular value in tools to help them apply the four principles by interrogating the balance of power between youth and adults and envisioning equitable access to resources youth might need to participate in spaces of shared power.

If you are interested in training for yourself or your organization, find more information on  the Training page.

Do Better: Youth-Adult Partnership in Education Settings

This post continues a series on youth-adult partnership as an anti-oppression tool.

Looking back at the start of school year 2020-21, I recall talk of applying lessons from that pandemic-driven school year to develop a new model for education. As schools return across the country for SY2021-22, I think it’s fair to say we failed to realize that promise. And it’s not because students didn’t speak up about their needs. On this first day back to in-person school for students here in Washington, DC, I offer some reflections about the need and potential opportunities for youth-adult partnership to reduce oppression in education settings. 

The education system is no less oppressive for young people than other youth-impacting systems, such as child welfare and juvenile justice. Education leaders exclusively control hundreds of hours of children’s lives each year, dictate what and how children and youth learn, and even who gets to learn, often without reference to what benefits or is relevant to youth. 

Children and youth, and indeed all of us, are harmed by decisions that whitewash history, inadequately prepare and support teachers to manage diverse classrooms and mental health needs, and prioritize standardized measures learning over the growth and development of lifelong learners.

Push out practices entirely remove youth who challenge teachers and administrators beyond what they’re prepared to handle. The entrenchment of law enforcement in schools, through School Resource Officers, exclusionary discipline policies, and searches or metal detectors at doors, goes even further to criminalize and excise the self-determination of students. System failures to adequately bridge the digital divide during the pandemic removed even more youth from the learning environment. 

How can schools and other educational institutions reimagine sharing power and accountability among adults and youth? 

Youth-adult partnership is a decision-making structure where youth and adults come to the table together, identify an issue or question together, and apply their unique skills, knowledge, and assets to solving it together. Better decisions result. 

Youth-adult partnership can occur between one adult and one youth arriving at a decision personal to them. For example, a teacher and student who’s been causing frequent “disruptions” could partner to identify the root cause of why the student is not engaged, and can co-develop an agreement for moving forward constructively. 

Youth-adult partnership can also look more formal and include groups of youth and adults. A common example is boards of directors with youth and adult members or advisory bodies of youth or families. 

Upcoming posts will highlight growing examples of youth-adult partnership in systems. Reach out to me if you have an example you think I should share or are looking for support to build a model within your organization or institution.

Practical Tips for Engaging Youth as Speakers at Your Event

Updated September 22, 2022

As a professional in youth development and justice, I’ve attended many conferences, meetings, and trainings where young people speak. Sometimes, how adults involve youth is downright cringe-worthy. Other times, it puts the young person in danger. 

I know that most, if not all, of the adults who seek to engage youth as speakers do so with good intent. But good intentions are not enough. Even when youth are not equipped to advocate for themselves in these situations, as they sometimes aren’t, adults bear responsibility to practice these basics.

Here are my practical steps adults should take to do more than “check the box” of youth voice and make it a safe, meaningful experience for adult and youth participants.

101-level best practices

• Avoid asking youth with juvenile records to share their charges or specifics of their offenses in public settings. 

You risk negating the protections of confidentiality central to juvenile records. 

• Value the experience of the young person AND what their experience taught them about policy or practice decisions. 

Youth are experts in their lives with the capacity to apply that expertise to systems change. You would never restrict a PhD to sharing their dissertation research, so why would you keep a young person from applying what they learned to your questions?

• Don’t “put youth on the spot” with questions you haven’t vetted with them beforehand. 

The spotlight may pressure youth to answer these questions even if they wouldn’t otherwise.

• Recognize the traumatic nature of what you’re asking youth to share. 

Ensure youth receive support from you, other trusted adults, and/or peers with more public speaking experience to avoid re-traumatization. Depending on the nature of the event, consider planning a safe word youth can use to privately signal discomfort. 

201-level best practices

• Partner with youth throughout the process, from planning the iniital proposal or agenda through debriefing after the event. 

A co-designed workshop will better accomplish your goals for and will avoid tokenizing young people. A token panelist is readily apparent to your audience. 

• Feature youth as a majority of the panel rather than have one youth represent all youth voices.

The experiences of young people, while they may share commonalities, are as unique as each person. Limiting your youth panelists to one risks leaving out crucial diversity of experience and, again, tokenizing an individual youth speaker. 

• Prioritize youth speakers at multiple points in an event, not just during the meal break. 

I’ve been to so many events where youth are relegated to talking over clinking forks and knives. Not only will your attendees appreciate having a moment to break bread with colleagues without interruption, you signal equal value of youth voice by giving youth equal representation in main event sessions.

301-level best practices

• Support youth to step into moderator or leadership roles. 

Youth who have served on panels or spoken at events before may be ready to step into moderator roles or manage a panel themselves. One goal of engaging youth in events can and should be to facilitate their professional development in diverse and evolving ways. 

To delve deeper on these tips or for direct support engaging youth in your organization’s upcoming events, contact me.

Youth-Adult Partnership is an Anti-Oppression Tool: A Series

Youth-adult partnership secures everyone’s right to self-determination, increases young people’s power over their own lives, and upends the pervasive privilege-oppressor relationship between adults and youth. Youth-adult partnership takes diverse forms but all center on shared power, shared accountability, shared resources, and shared language.

A first step for philanthropic, non-profit and advocacy organizations, juvenile justice and child welfare agencies, and education institutions that seek to reduce oppression should be investing in a sustainable infrastructure for youth-adult partnership. In upcoming posts, I will share practical opportunities for these diverse sectors to reduce oppression through youth-adult partnership.

The Everyday Oppression of Young People

Among the myriad ways humans find to “other” and oppress each other, I highlight the oppression of young people. Adultism, a common term for silencing youth voices and experiences, intersects with oppression of girls and young women, Black, Indigenous and other young people of color, youth with disabilities, and LGBTQ young people. 

However, adultism differs from other forms of oppression in the shift every person experiences over a lifetime from a position of oppression to one of privilege. The automatic and universal experience of aging leads us from a position of oppression as children and youth to one of privilege as adults. 

Human brains are well equipped to cloak and/or justify our oppression of others, thus oppressors rarely recognize their oppression for what it is. The universality of adultism makes it even less likely people recognize it as oppression; we accept it as the normal course of life. It shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t have to be.

Youth-Adult Partnership as an Anti-Oppression Tool

Youth-adult partnership takes a variety of forms but is fundamentally a decision-making structure where youth and adults come to the table together, identify an issue or question together, and apply their unique skills, knowledge and assets to solving it together. Everyone shares power, accountability, resources to support their participation, and a common language. Both youth and adults need increased support to make this happen.

In the various professional spaces where adults make decisions affecting youth, real opportunities exist to improve outcomes for organizations, adults and young people and to reduce oppression through youth-adult partnership.

The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange published a condensed version of this series in an article focused on the juvenile justice system.