Principles 15 страница

Collective solidarity also is fostered through group exercises and discus-sions at the same time as individual mentoring takes place. For example, team-building exercises are highly recommended because they not only en-courage the development of group identity but also introduce fun into the training experience. Rewards that promote cooperation instead of com-petition help develop cohesion, bringing an added dimension to group ac-tivities.

Periodically, celebratory activities should be included to mark milestones in the training program; pizza parties and movies are common examples. These fun-filled occasions take on symbolic and substantive significance for marginalized youth, because typically their educational institutions do not see such celebrations as warranted. Additionally, a graduation cere-mony of some kind should be held, and certificates of accomplishment be issued at the end of the first major training period. Sadly, such attesta-tions of achievement may mark the first public recognition of success that these young participants have ever received. Families, friends, and stake-holders should be invited to these ceremonies, as well as the media.

Excellent training programs are well crafted, with tremendous attention to detail—especially to the characteristics and backgrounds of youth par-ticipants. No two groups are ever the same, and therefore no two trainings ever should be identical. Group dynamics must always be taken into ac-count. For example, trainees with limited literacy skills should not be ex-pected to participate in activities that require strong writing and reading skills. Training activities should be sufficiently flexible to take into account a number of such factors.

One training activity that sometimes is addressed implicitly or explicitly in organizations that sponsor youth-led organizing is what is commonly referred to as praxis, or critical reflection:

Although reflection can feel indulgent in the face of this urgency [life and death], it is also important for strengthening your work. Have the courage and the foresight to make time for reflection. Reflection processes create space. . . to step back and critically examine your work. (Youth in Focus 2004, 5)

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At first glance, praxis seems rather straightforward, a relatively easy activity for which to set aside time. However, in reality, this reflection can be a painful journey for young people (as well as adults). This is true because praxis forces the participants to tie emotions, history, and theory together in order to develop a composite picture of their own lives, as well as the life of the community in which they reside. When accomplished well, praxis represents a time for healing and for taking stock of individual and group accomplishments—and this can be very rewarding!

On a final note, it is imperative that youth-led organizing provide op-portunities for promising young people to receive the proper training and a chance to work their way up the organizational ladder to high-level posi-tions. One experienced youth organizer, Henry Fernandez, of the Open Society Institute, made this very point (Youth Organizing 1998, 10):

While youth organizing seeks to be non-hierarchical, in good youth de-velopment programs youth can be pulled through the hierarchy in an individual development process so they can eventually have skills to be good managers. Hierarchy allows the program to set expectations for young people, so they can see where they are going. . . . I wonder if youth organizing groups should have the ability to build institutions which can focus on young people as they develop during different stages.

Structure

With any form of training, the structure and size of the group play an influential role in helping shape the training experience. Usually, a cohort size of approximately ten is ideal for most training sessions that place im-portance on the quality of interaction in the group. This limited number enables participating trainees to better understand the role and influence of group dynamics, and it also may approximate experiences that they will have during collective actions and events. Other structures for training exercises divide participants into two’s or three’s so that they can go into the community and undertake activities focused on identifying community issues and assets.

When activities require trainees to report back to the group, every effort should be made to ensure that each participant has an opportunity to do so. Some young people will show leadership qualities and want to report back whenever they have a chance. It is important that trainers rotate the group reporters in order to give each participant an opportunity to exercise lis-tening, group facilitation, and public speaking skills.

Attendance at local, regional, and national conferences, although ex-pensive, provides young activists with important opportunities both to learn and to share experiences with youth leaders and organizers outside of their immediate neighborhood. Wheeler (2003) recommends that activities

RECRUITMENT, SCREENING, PREPARATION, AND SUPPORT

be developed that encourage young people to make global connections through international exchanges, visits, and interactions. When finances are limited, the young people who attend local, national, and international conferences should be expected to assume training or facilitating roles upon their return. Leadership skills are developed through these experiences, and those who have the privilege of attending are placed in positions of in-creased power and additional responsibility.

Trainers/Facilitators

The role of trainer/facilitator is critical in any form of social interven-tion, and youth-led community organizing certainly is no exception (Wilson et al. 2006). The age, gender, sexual identity, experience, and other socio-demographic background factors of the trainer/facilitator also will play a role in his or her ultimate effectiveness. Ideally, the best trainer/facilitator is someone who is from the community and who has worked his or her way up through the ranks. The individual brings the legitimacy of expertise (educational/training and experiential) and is a role model for young peo-ple, even though he or she may not feel comfortable in that role. The less social-cultural distance between the trainer/facilitator and the group, the higher the likelihood that training will be successful.

It is best to conceptualize trainers as a team rather than as one person because there are so many different facets to training that it is unrealistic to expect a single individual to meet all of the group’s needs. Some courses of instruction may lend themselves to teaching by one or two trainers, while others will necessitate more than two. The concept of a cadre has emerged in the literature, and this is generally a nucleus or core group of participants who stay with an organizing campaign over an extended time (Murphy and Cunningham 2003). Members of a cadre make excellent candidates to as-sume the roles of trainers in youth-led campaigns.

What are the qualities that make someone a successful trainer? There certainly is no magic package of traits. However, a successful youth orga-nizer trainer is someone who: (1) has had extensive experience in the field and can share war stories; (2) is a great listener; (3) has excellent verbal and nonverbal communication skills; (4) feels comfortable with youth; (5) knows the community from an experiential perspective; and (6) has the knowledge and skill sets that can be tapped by youth.

Practitioners may argue that the above list of qualities makes the po-sition difficult to fill, even for adult organizers. In truth, effective trainers and facilitators must be developed by sponsoring organizations. As noted in chapter 4, intermediary organizations often have the resources to con-duct training for youth organizers at their own facilities or by sending staff out to local groups to provide instruction, consultation, and technical assistance. Although it always is ideal to have the expertise in house,

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this sometimes is not possible, particularly in the case of organizations that have been in existence for a short time or have limited resources. Under such circumstances, assistance from intermediaries is appropri-ate. However, regardless of where they are situated, ineffective trainers and facilitators can cause a great deal of damage to any youth-led cam-paign; this role cannot be compromised without increasing the likelihood of failure.

Support

The role of ongoing support once a participant becomes part of an organi-zation and engages in social action has received a fair amount of attention because of its critical importance (Walker 2003). Ongoing support also provides campaign leaders with opportunities to help youth reflect on their experiences, learning in the process. Ongoing support for youth organizers goes far beyond providing technical assistance. It also encompasses help with the pain that young people feel as they gain a perspective on the his-tory of oppression that they have experienced ( James 2005). In more ex-treme situations, a referral to outside help may be in order.

LISTEN, Inc. (2003, 13) specifically identifies these types of support when facilitating the participation of marginalized young people:

In addition to political development, youth organizers are increasingly assuming responsibility for supporting young people through the stresses of daily life. Youth organizing groups often work with youth who are at risk of incarceration, in danger of dropping out of school, or are discon-nected from family. Managing the diverse and sometimes life-threatening needs of these young people can be overwhelming. Oftentimes, youth or-ganizing groups establish partnerships with existing social service agen-cies in order to refer young people for formal intervention such as health services, literacy, and tutoring. In the absence of such partnerships, many youth organizing groups find the lack of resources and expertise within their organization—or within the community at large—an obstacle to main-taining youth participation.

As a result, finding the right source for potential counseling support is of critical importance before young activists even start a new project. As noted by LISTEN, Inc. (2003), academic support also must be available whenever tutoring or educational guidance is offered; and this feature must be fully integrated if these efforts hope to be sustained. In essence, successful youth organizing depends on taking a holistic approach, identifying the assets and needs of young people. Failure to embrace a broad view of support is to deny the reality that many marginalized youth face in their daily struggles.

RECRUITMENT, SCREENING, PREPARATION, AND SUPPORT

PEER-GROUP SUPERVISION

Supervision in youth-led organizing provides leaders with an opportunity to impart practical knowledge, helps participants grow personally and professionally, and presents valuable information to project staff about how participants view their experience and how to enhance their learning. At times common themes emerge out of individual supervision/mentoring that can serve as a basis for peer discussions, further training, and guidance for future activities and organizing efforts.

INDIVIDUAL SUPERVISION/MENTORING

Many labels are used to characterize the situation in which one person provides guidance and feedback to another. Typically, this relationship is referred to as supervision. However, the direct encounters that young people may have had with supervisors, along with the similar experiences of family and friends, will color their expectations and perceptions. If supervisory interactions are positive, then young people will enter this relationship with hope for a positive outcome. However, when previous encounters have been negative, such as associated with micro-management, supervisors/ mentors will have additional work to do to prepare participants for new and more positive associations.

On a final note, it is highly advisable that organizations develop mech-anisms for maintaining contact and support among alumni. The important work of attaining social and economic justice cannot necessarily be confined to immediate or ongoing organizing programs. It also takes place in other settings and may well be integrated into the fabric of life of former partic-ipants. The South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) has recognized this group and attempted to address the importance of connectedness. They use alumni reunions, for example, to facilitate the arduous process of achieving social change, providing a forum for reconnecting with those who have aged out of youth organizing and moved on to adult-led social-change efforts (Malick and Ahmad 2001).

Conclusion

Clearly, the preparatory stages examined in this chapter are critical to meeting the overall goals of youth-led initiatives. The reader can argue that these steps are labor-intensive and thus quite costly; however, any form of social inter-vention, particularly one that stresses civic participation on the part of mar-ginalized youth, will be labor-intensive. This certainly is the case when that participation is oriented toward social change and possibly entails conflict!

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Furthermore, one learns to expect the unexpected because, for many of these young participants, this organized activity may be their first formal involvement in civic life and offer a new experience playing an active role in shaping their own futures. The opportunity for youth to be proactive, rather than reactive, brings with it its rewards and challenges. If youth-led orga-nizing is conceptualized as community capacity enhancement, then the fi-nancial costs and time involved in preparing young people for roles as civic activists who enhance community capacity are not excessive. Clearly, the long-term benefits result in empowered individuals who are willing and able to help empower their communities.

Crosscutting Theoretical

and Practice Themes

Social change does not come easy, and involv-ing young people doesn’t make it easier. But it does make it better. It adds new depth and perception to the challenges and opportunities that face the community. It can result in a campaign that engages broad sectors of the community itself.

—Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, Creating Change (2004)

Youth-led organizing takes place within a context as do all other forms of social practice. It can occur in a variety of settings, but most typically it is found in schools and communities. It addresses a multitude of issues and concerns as it attempts to bring about positive social change. Goals include capacity enhancement for both youth participants and the larger community (Williams 2003). However, regardless of the particular youth-led organizing focus, there are important similarities with other organizing campaigns. These crosscutting themes provide both practitioners and academics with a means for recognizing commonalities in the field of youth-led organizing across the nation, even though particular initiatives and projects are re-sponding to local concerns and issues.

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Research Informing Crosscutting Themes

The discussion of crosscutting themes addressed in this chapter, as with the guiding principles addressed in chapter 4, was influenced by the authors’ experiences and empirical research from the field. Findings from research studies, some similar to the ones cited in chapter 4 and others, helped us select these themes and shape them. As noted in chapter 4, the researchers drew upon findings from a variety of fields, most notably youth devel-opment, community organizing, and youth-led organizing. These sources, along with the themes we have identified, are as follows:

Innovation Center’s Youth Leadership for Development Initiative (2003) resulted in a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data about youth experiences and organizational challenges in the field (themes 1, 3–6, 8, and 13–15).

The senior author’s book on youth-led research, Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Research (Delgado 2006), raises a number of key issues regarding the youth-led field and the research that youth must be willing to undertake in leading community organizing efforts (themes 1, 3–8, and 10–15).

The Carnegie’s Young People Initiative’s (Cutler 2002) research re-port Taking the Initiative—Promoting Young People’s Involvement in Public Decision Making in the USA, based on findings from over forty youth programs across the country, focuses on a wide variety of youth civic-engagement manifestations (themes 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12–15).

Eccles and Gootman’s (2002) book Community Programs to Promote Youth Development examines the field and research on facilitating and hindering factors in carrying out youth development-focused and inspired initiatives (themes 1, 3–6, 8, and 13–15 ).

A report for the Edward W. Hazen Foundation (Scheie 2003) titled Organizing for Youth Development and School Improvements raised im-portant issues and made recommendations for youth organizing involving education (themes 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 10–12, 14, and 15 ).

Lerner and Benson’s book (2003) Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities provides data on youth and community devel-opment (themes 1, 3–6, 9, 13, and 15).

The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity’s multi-level study Changing the Rules of the Game: Youth Development and Structural Racism (Quiroz-Martinez, HoSang, and Villarosa 2004), based on six-teen youth development organizations, focuses on themes related to social justice in the field (themes 1–3, 5, 6, 8, and 11–15).

The Movement Center has produced three reports that have direct applicability to youth-led community organizing. The first report

CROSSCUTTING THEORETICAL AND PRACTICE THEMES

( James 2005), in Bringing it Together: United Youth Organizing, De-velopment and Services for Long-term Sustainability, based on an anal-ysis of six community organizing sponsoring organizations, pro-vides important lessons for intergenerational and youth-led youth organizing (themes 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, and 11–15). The second report (Quioroz-Martinez, HoSang & Villarosa 2004) is ReGeneration: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice and it presents important les-sons and themes related to youth organizing, intergenerational and youth-led from an environmental justice perspective (themes 1–6, 8, 11, 12, 14, and 15 ). The third and final report is Making Space, Making Change: Profiles of Youth-Led and Youth-Driven Organizations (Youth Wisdom Project 2004). It offers many critical lessons for max-imizing youth leadership in organizations (themes 1–3, 5, 6, and 10–15).

Crosscutting Themes

We have identified fifteen crosscutting themes and devoted this chapter to examining each in turn. These fifteen themes fall into four categories: (1) purpose of organizing; (2) recruitment and support; (3) group structure; and

(4) youth and adult roles. Within these four categories, there are several subcategories, as follows:

1. Purpose of organizing: empowerment through inclusive demo-cratic participation and ongoing recruitment; multifaceted orga-nizing goals; and positive social change for individuals and com-munity.

2. Recruitment and support: importance of planning; leadership devel-opment as a central feature; learning; importance of fun; funding of project; family as a facilitating and hindering force; role and im-portance of communication and information technology in youth-led organizing.

3. Group structure: autonomous, locally based, unaffiliated, stream-lined structures; age-related issues shape target systems; youth cul-ture shapes the organizing process.

4. Youth and adult roles: youth in decision-making roles; and adult roles in support.

These themes reflect some of the major advances made in youth-led or-ganizing, as well as some of the challenges that remain. Several of these topics are covered in greater detail in this chapter, while others receive only a broad overview—not because of a lack of importance but because they have already been examined in other portions of this book.

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Purpose of Organizing

1. Empowerment Through Inclusive Democratic Participation and Ongoing Recruitment

Young people are a relatively powerless group in our society, and the central goal of community organizing is collective empowerment for social change. The concept of empowerment, while overused and abused, is used in youth-led community organizing (Checkoway, Figueroa, and Richards-Schuster 2003; Young Wisdom Project 2004). Empowerment is sought at both the individual and collective levels—a critical point that is revisited in several of the themes that follow. And youth empowerment is consistent with the fun-damental belief that young people are assets to their communities, with the potential of making significant contributions to bettering the lives of others (Checkoway, Figueroa, and Richards-Schuster 2003).

Community organizing generates power through its large numbers of participants, or people power. Indeed, the youth-led model emphasizes in-clusiveness and participatory democracy, as examined in chapter 5. But the distinction between participation and power is germane here. It is insufficient to have a voice through simple participation; power implies the ability to bring about desired changes, even in the face of opposition. Organizing challenges the entrenched interests and the dominant elites, who can be expected to resist attempts to alter existing power relationships. Their responses may include cooptation, deceptive and diversionary counter-tactics, or outright repression (Ginwright 2006).

Youth-led organizing initiatives attempt to change and democratize in-stitutional policies and procedures using the power of numbers; the capabil-ity of quickly mobilizing a large, energized, and activist base of constituents is a major strength of this form of social intervention. Therefore, recruitment of new participants is a high priority, and the methodology for doing this was discussed at some length in the previous chapter. Given that the mem-bership constantly turns over as older youth age out and younger ones join, recruitment is an ongoing activity. Since youth-led organizing seldom uses a model whereby an overarching organization of pre-existing youth groups is formed, direct membership recruitment is most appropriate (Staples 2004a). Young participants are recruited on a one-by-one basis, through a variety of techniques including street outreach, knocking on doors, home visits, word of mouth, one-on-one meetings, house meetings, and presenta-tions at other gatherings where significant numbers of youth are present.

2. Multifaceted Organizing Goals

Ideally, youth-led community organizing embraces multiple goals that are both short term and long term depending on their probability of success

CROSSCUTTING THEORETICAL AND PRACTICE THEMES

(Charles 2005; Scheie 2003). And these goals are not just externally oriented but also include personal development. As with their adult-led counterparts, the success of youth organizing initiatives very much depends on how the issues are conceptualized and framed. As discussed in the previous chapter, good issues to organize around should meet all three criteria: (1) be specific;

(2) be immediate; and (3) be winnable (Alinsky 1971; Staples 2004a); it does not suffice to meet just one or two of these criteria.

Being able to achieve the group’s immediate ends will do wonders for young people who previously have not experienced significant success in their lives. When achievements are accomplished within a group context, positive feelings are intensified. The process that youth activists have un-dertaken to arrive at shared goals then takes on immense importance, be-cause ultimately the group must own its common ends and those ends must have true meaning to their lives. Consistent with adult-led initiatives, the goals for youth-led organizing are unlikely to be embraced if imposed on the group by an external source.

Breaking long-term organizing goals into incremental mid- and short-term goals makes it possible to measure progress. This practice also helps prevent young activists from becoming overwhelmed by large issues, helps them maintain a sense of momentum as regular headway is recognized and re-corded, and facilitates the necessary adjustments that have to be made along the way. Remember, social-action campaigns are best thought of as dynamic and flexible; unforeseen circumstances (both opportunities and barriers) can arise to alter goals as well as strategies. This is normal or typical, and the valu-able lessons gleaned from this experience apply to life goals as well.

3. Positive Social Change for Individuals and Community

Positive social change must be considered from a multifaceted perspec-tive to fully appreciate the ramifications of a change campaign. The simplest view of this focuses on the individual organizer and the goal of the cam-paign. However, a more encompassing view necessitates examination of the immediate circle (family, friends, and neighbors), as well as the unintended community changes. This broader and deeper analysis makes evaluation more challenging, but it likewise is more rewarding and empowering from a change perspective, and also is more consistent with the way youth-led community organizing should be envisioned (Simpson and Roehlkepartain 2003).

It would be tempting to focus on individual behavioral changes and the acquisition of personal competencies when considering youth organizers. Certainly, there is evidence of growth in positive attitudes and improved self-esteem in the youth development and youth-led literature (Charles 2005; Perry and Imperial 2001; Ramphele 2002). What makes youth-led

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community organizing so different and powerful is that the field has con-ceptualized the importance of change at both the individual and the com-munity levels. These two goals are not mutually exclusive! One of the more serious criticisms of youth development has been its exclusive focus on individual gain, rather than placing that advancement within a broader context of valuing both individuals and their communities.

Recruitment and Support

4. Importance of Planning

It is relatively easy to think of community organizing as a method unto itself, in similar fashion to management or planning and program development. However, it would be foolish to believe that successful youth-led organizing does not require good management and planning skills. True, management and planning may be the backdrop rather than the foreground when com-munity organizing efforts are underway; however, they still are part of the picture! This section highlights the importance of careful planning for social-action campaigns and explains how these skills can be transferred to other youth-focused arenas.

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