Youth/Adult Learning Communities

Mitra delves into this issue again with the article Collaborating with Students: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Schools.  The article examines how youth-adult partnerships can help improve understanding of school-based collaborations and examines contexts that enable Y-AP in schools including: fostering trust and respect among group members, creating meaningful (not equal) roles, building the capacity for […]

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Y-AP Can Help Prevent Youth Violence

Zeldin’s synthesis of existing research in Preventing Youth Violence Through the Promotion of Community Engagement and Membership reveals that violence prevention initiatives can be strengthened when youth are invited into community decision making, with authentic opportunities for empowerment and membership.

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Strategies Used by Youth Associations in Low Income Communities

In many economically poor communities, youth have little choice but to use their power to influence community.  Using data from Dadaab and Gaya Island, MacNeil and her colleagues discuss the best practices of youth associations in mobilizing residents and resources in chapter 1 of The Changing Landscape of Youth Work: Theory and Practice for an […]

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Youth-driven and adult-driven programs: What is the difference?

A comparison of Youth-driven and adult-driven youth programs (2005). In this article, Reed Larson and his colleagues discuss the experiences of youth in high quality programs. They compared youth-driven and adult-driven programs. In the youth driven programs, youth experienced a high degree of ownership and empowerment and gained leadership and planning skills. In the adult-driven […]

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Good practices for strong youth-adult relationships

Zeldin, Larson, and Camino (2005) brought together over 20 scholars and field professionals to write about good practices for strong youth-adult relationships and partnerships. The articles focused on community organizations that put a high value on youth voice in governance and program decision making. Viewed together, the studies provide diverse insights into effectiveness. You can […]

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Y-AP as a Core Practice for Experiential Learning and Youth Development

Youth participation and youth voice emerged as critical practices during the 1980s as part of the experiential and civic education movement. Hamilton provides an historical perspective on the best practices of experiential learning (“Experiential Learning Programs for Youth“). Youth participation gained prominence again in the late 1990’s/early 2000s as part of the shift away from […]

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Youth Activism as a Context for Learning and Development

This introduction to the American Behavioral Scientist: Youth Activism as a Context for Learning and Development  by Ben Kirshner builds on recent studies that have documented the potential of youth activism for influencing political change toward socially just ends. Youth activism groups represent distinctive environments for learning and development. The power of youth activism stems […]

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Youth: Agents of Change

Youth organizing is a strategy that integrates elements of youth development, community development, and social change. In this article, authors Brian Christens and Tom Dolan, offer a case study of a successful youth organizing effort to highlight the potential of youth organizing as a youth and community development strategy. Download the article, Interweaving Youth Development, […]

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Implementing Youth Adult Partnership in Established Organizations

Y-AP is a social innovation.  It is not understood by many in the United States.  Hence, there are many challenges to those who wish to adopt the practice.  The research in this article, Integrating a New Practice into an Established Organization, details how practitioners go about implementing Y-AP into established organizations and communities. The research […]

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