Youth Stakeholders in Neighbourhood Revitalization: A Case Example

Language Arts, 2015

In this article, we describe a youth leadership program we designed with a nonprofit organization aimed at revitalizing low-income neighborhoods. The partnership that we describe stresses the value of understanding youth perspectives on a dearth of affordable housing in their neighborhoods, the threat of the loss of vital goods and services through increased tax cuts, and the need to provide safe spaces for kids to be kids. By including kids as researchers, we have faith that they will become leaders in and beyond their neighborhoods and work to protect the interests of all who live in these communities. We argue that programs like the one we discuss provide a logical starting place for reinvesting time and energy in opportunities for relationship building with children. Understanding youth’s perspectives on what it means to flourish is especially important at a time when neighborhood schools are disappearing and policies have eroded public spaces where youth can build relationships and a sustaining sense of community. Without schools as anchors in neighborhoods, it is more essential than ever to understand how to create and maintain vibrant communities that support youths’ sense of identity, agency, and development.

Child & Youth Services

Engaging youth who live with high-risk, marginalized conditions presents a significant challenge in our society, considering the prevalence of disconnect and distrust they often experience within their social environments/systems. Yet, meaningful youth engagement is a key concept not only for youth development, but also for a systems change to more effectively support highrisk youth and families. This article presents a framework of youth engagement developed over 9 months, using participatory action research (PAR) with 16 youth leaders in a communitybased research team. Although this framework has incorporated the youth leaders’ lived experiences, talents, and voices, positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD) have theoretically contextualized our research.

Action Research, 2017

This paper aims to reflect on the results of the project Community Intervention in Urban Areas: a youth driven initiative. This project envisioned the development of a Transnational Seminar that gave origin to the development of youth arts intervention projects and to the elaboration of the document “Youth Policies for Urban Neighborhoods”. The project started from the youth’s reflection on the physical, social, economic, and cultural degradation of specific spaces/territories and communities in Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium (spaces in ruins, non-places and other abandoned areas), exploring these territories as spaces for transformation and future renovation. The idea is to explore the ways youth may contribute to the transformation of these spaces, therefore enhancing their civic knowledge, capacity to intervene and influence policy and research under this theme. We wish to explore the role of younger generations, and youth in particular, through a change of paradig...

2006

Youth participation is a process of involving young people in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives. It includes initiatives that emphasize educational reform, juvenile justice, environmental quality, and other issues; that involve populations distinguished by class, race, gender, and other characteristics; and that operate in rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and neighborhoods of large cities in developing areas and industrial nations worldwide.

Brown, T.M. & Rodriguez, L.F. (2009). Editors’ Introduction. New Directions for Youth Development.

Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 2016

This paper documents the opportunities and challenges experienced by youth leaders and community agency partners in our community-based research project on youth engagement. Participants provided reflective statements, based on their experiences during the course of this multi-year project. Specifically, these insights focused on (a) youth-oriented and collaborative research processes (for example highlighting youth voice-"bottom-up process for youth by youth," and colearning and team work); (b) group dynamics (for example, common purpose, dealing with transformation, relationship and trust-building, and power issues); and (c) benefits for community youth-serving agencies and youth themselves, for example, capacitybuilding, grounded in youth experiences through participatory research, and knowledge translation and practical application-advancing research into action). The process of being involved in this research was coined an "amazing journey" to facilitate positive change and transformation within the youth and community partners. Understanding such youth engagement issues has implications for better supporting high-risk youth and their families in order to enhance the quality of their lives in a meaningful, sustainable way.

Community Development, 2020

Young people (ages 15-25) are globally the largest and fastest growing segment of the population. While youth increase in number, the challenge and opportunity facing communities around the world is to create meaningful avenues for youth participation in civic, economic and academic life. This article presents a research narrative describing a youth participatory action research program implemented in North Philadelphia in 2017. Through this process, youth researchers identified a social justice topic of critical interest to them (community/police violence), collected primary qualitative data and reported their findings. The impact that participation had on the youth researchers, the local community, and local police/ community interaction is described. Finally, recommendations are given for increasing the scope/impact of the program and implications for program and policy.

“Urban” youth–a euphemism for underserved, poor, marginalized, ethnic minority youth–can be active participants in community change. Countering the predominant image of these youth as disengaged or troubled, this article describes three projects that engage urban youth in community change through participatory research. The authors share their experiences as adult allies on these projects and examine four lessons learned, addressing: (1) the importance of positionality; (2) the role of adult allies in youth-led projects; (3) the creation of safe spaces; and (4) the building of trust and relationships. They conclude that urban youth can become a vital resource for community transformation.