In a recent conversation, a colleague challenged the group to think about how we create new tables for youth and adult partnership rather than invite youth to join existing adult-run tables. For example, rather than add one or two youth seats to a board that’s been adults-only for 5 years, can we disband the old board in favor of a new one that’s crafted by and for youth and adults together?
This model for crafting youth-adult partnerships is certainly a gold standard that will be more feasible when creating new decision-making bodies vs. re-imagining existing ones. However, the lessons here can apply to even small adjustments if fully reconstituting an existing decision-making body may not be feasible.
What will it take to redefine spaces for decision-making that revolve around youth-adult partnership?
Humility - Engage youth in deciding how best to engage them. Are we decision-makers even asking the right questions or concerned about the right problems?
Stepping back - Consider beginning meetings with only one or two traditional decision-makers at the table and slowly adding more. As the new decision-making structure begins to coalesce, youth members retain their positions of authority within the group and invite traditional decision-makers to take on leadership roles if and when they find value in that.
Money - Fund “mom and pop” community organizations to build youth engagement in the ways that make sense for them. Support capacity building for those individuals or organizations as necessary, but don’t seek to mold them to your ideas of how engagement should look.
Flexibility - Youth and community are diverse and need diverse ways of engaging in decisions. You may need multiple opportunities spanning a range from one-time, online surveys through and including shared partnership on a board or commission. Just as every decision-making body has those members who only show up when something big is happening, youth may have particular time or talents they can offer.
Inviting youth to existing decision-making structures is certainly easier, so why invest the additional effort to create new structures?
Existing decision-making bodies and the systems they represent may have sewn distrust over years or even generations of disenfranchisement, failed promises, and oppression of the youth, families, and communities they now seek to engage.
Comfort with the status quo enables traditional decision-makers to retain barriers, such as jargon, between them and youth, families and community.
The structures adults create for decision-making have struggled to make effective decisions since their inceptions, so why not try something different.
Whether your organization is ready to create new structures for youth-adult partnership or apply these lessons to an existing decision-making body, I can provide guidance, on-the-ground support, and training at any stage of the process. Contact me to explore how we can work together!
Gratitude - I’m grateful to organizations involved in Minneapolis and St. Paul-area fair housing efforts for exhaustively documenting their process and lessons learned, which inforrmed this article. See, for example.