Interweaving Youth Development, Community Development, and Social Change Through Youth Organizing

Abstract

Community organizing groups that have built coalitions for local change over the past few decades are now involving young people as leaders in efforts to improve quality of life. The current study explores a particularly effective youth organizing initiative through review of organizational documents and collection and analysis of qualitative data. The study finds that this model for youth organizing is effective at producing impacts at multiple levels because it weaves together youth development, community development, and social change into a unified organizing cycle. The initiative encourages participants by promoting psychological empowerment, leadership development, and sociopolitical development. Simultaneously, youth organizing produces community-level impacts, including new program implementation, policy change, and institution building. Social changes include intergenerational and multicultural collaboration in the exercise of power. This interplay between youth development, community development, and social change is discussed in relation to the growing field of youth organizing and other efforts to engage youth in civil society.

Diverging Paths: Understanding Racial Differences in Civic Engagement Among White, African American, and Latina/o Adolescents Using Structural Equation Modeling

“…This suggests that there may be some aspect of the wording of these items about community that caused students from different racial/ethnic backgrounds to respond differently to the items. For example, it is possible that concept of "community" may have different connotations students from different/racial ethnic backgrounds (Christens & Dolan, 2011;Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007).…”

Training Of Social Educator As Organizer Of Social Activity Of Adolescents

“…In the conditions of the late 20 th and early 21 st century, there is a need to make some adjustments in the theoretical and methodological basis of the head of the child of the children's association as a social pedagogue of a new type who owns general and professional competencies (social, communicative, educational ones) (Selivanova, Sokolova, 2012;Selivanova, Sokolova, 2005;Christens, Dolan, 2011).…”

“…The head of the developing children's public association is forced to be simultaneously a teacher, psychologist, lawyer, methodologist, journalist, director and administrator practically (especially at the initial stage of his activity). Another possibility is to attract all the necessary specialists "from the outside" -also on a voluntary basis, which, undoubtedly, is a rather laborious task (Christens, Dolan, 2011;Dawes, Larson, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.08.9 Corresponding Author: Gennadiy Yu.…”

“…Nevertheless the demands to the professional in upbringing of the 21st century need the development of the accumulated knowledge taking into account both traditional and new actors of upbringing (Belyaev, 2016;Christens, & Dolan, 2011).…”

Taking stock of youth organizing: An interdisciplinary perspective

“…In many models of youth organizing, large social actions are bracketed by research and evaluation. In one organizing initiative in San Bernardino, California (see Christens & Dolan, 2011), youth leaders partnered with local universities to conduct and analyze surveys of thousands of their peers to understand local youth violence and suggest solutions. These young organizers also thoroughly evaluate their own performances in meetings, offering constructive feedback to one another.…”