Four Youth Engagement Resolutions for the New Year

For most of us, the new year is the time where we start fresh. Whether it is aiming to accomplish everything on our vision boards or simply identifying and committing to that New Year’s resolution—sticking to our goals is a meaningful accomplishment that we can be proud of.

At ETR’s Youth Engagement Network (YEN), we get excited about learning and discovering new approaches for meaningfully engaging young people. Using our wins and insights over the last year and a half, we are highlighting four resolutions that might make you rethink how your organization engages young people in 2022. 

youth people

1. Invest in youth inclusivity

You can tell a lot about an organization’s commitment to meaningful youth engagement by looking at their policies and procedures, their financial and developmental investments, and the type of culture and conditions in which they expect young people to thrive. To successfully engage youth, organizations should consider creating policies and procedures that demonstrate that young people are partners in the work, such as infusing youth participation into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies; or by securing funding to sustain youth-involved work and building the skills of youth-serving adults to increase youth’s capacity to be agents of change through training and hands-on experience; or by discontinuing systems of adultism and harmful power dynamics that create unsafe environments where lived experience and expertise of young people is not valued.

2. Commit to strengths-based application processes

Recruiting and selecting the right young people to participate in programs does not have to be a daunting task. Traditionally, organizations have grandfathered processes for vetting their recruits such as online applications, phone interviews, or group interviews. However, these processes can create unintended barriers to recruiting the right youth for programs, as they fail to promote the skills and contributions of young people. For a more equitable youth vetting process, organizations should think about recruiting as a showcase, where youth are assessed based of their talents and skills, rather than checking boxes and typing responses to short-and- long answered questions. You can learn a lot about a young person’s leadership style, communication style, and attention to detail by using games, scenarios, or by allowing them to respond to a prompt with an idea of their choice (e.g., poetry, photography, or song writing). Encouraging this type of creativity shows young people upfront that you want to see the authentic versions of them and that you value them and everything they have to offer. 

3. Rethink youth participation practices

Organizations must accept that they may not be the only ones competing for a young person’s attention. Whether they are balancing jobs, playing sports, participating in after-school social clubs, juggling responsibilities at home or lack reliable transportation, young people have competing priorities that should not be overlooked. Too often, organizations are inflexible in their approach to youth participation or rely on strict rules or accountability procedures. Organizations can meet youth where they are by creating opportunities for revolving participation. Revolving participation gives young people who want to use their skills the chance to contribute to a program without the burden of commitment and expectations they cannot keep. Practicing revolving participation does not replace youth voice—it elevates it. It can also be used as a recruitment hack for future councils since revolving youth may gain a deeper interest in the program through their limited role.

4. Break all the rules

We hate to say it, but it is time to toss the handbook. True youth engagement involves creating with youth, not for them. Some organizations limit youth participation to the conceptualization, implementation, and testing of programs. However, successful youth engagement should be collaborative. For example, organizations can partner with youth to determine their roles in programs and how they help to advance the organization’s mission, the tasks they will be responsible for and being realistic about their capacity, and what can be expected of them and how they expect to be treated by organizations and their staff. Breaking all the rules requires organizations to take the passenger seat while youth become the drivers of change. Most important, when we break the rules, we break new ground and begin to build a foundation of trust with young people which is necessary to make our work more effective and sustainable.

 

Youth engagement is not a systemically organized body of knowledge and therefore requires full organizational commitment and investments to get it right.

As the YEN continues to learn from our engagement with our partners, we intend to share these learnings so that we can foster environments where young people feel wanted and valued. So, as you and your organizations prepare to master youth engagement in 2022, remember that it is not just a mindset, it is a practice that must be embedded throughout your organization and in all your work.

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