CPN is designed and maintained by ONline @ UW: Electronic Publishing Group.

Topics: Youth

Community, Youth, Development:
Three Goals in Search of Connection

Karen J. Pittman

Reprinted with permission from New Designs for Youth Development, Winter 1996. Copyright © 1996.

It is important to be able to articulate quickly and clearly the logic of why community development and youth development and youth development are inextricably related, why both are dependent upon economic opportunities, hinge on the basic health of the functions of family and citizenship, and are, in the end, the only long-term strategies for preventing or reducing youth and community problems.

In 1994, the National Network for Youth (NNY) embraced "community youth development" as the term that best captured a unified vision of the essence of youth work because it reflects the critical need to continue "working in partnership with young people to strengthen or regain their ties to community—whether it be family, neighborhood, school or friends—and working with communities to value and support youth."

Adopting this vision within the network requires shifts in practices and priorities, as the goal becomes less about delivering services and more about offering supports and creating opportunities. NNY, as a network of youth workers and youth organizations, has spent the past year fleshing out what these changes in organizational and professional practices are and how they can be brought about.

Getting the public to embrace this vision, requires more, however. Organizations like the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research, a longtime partner with NNY, have complemented NNY by focusing a major part of their educational and technical assistance efforts on national and local policy makers and funders in order to increase understanding of the interconnections among these goals.

As youth workers, policy researchers, funders, and advocates come together to plan the work that will support the development of the maximum number of young people in the maximum number of communities in this country and around the world, it is important to be able to articulate quickly and clearly the logic of why community development and youth development are inextricably related, why both are dependent upon economic opportunities, hinge on the basic health of the functions of family and citizenship, and are, in the end, the only long-term strategies 6r preventing or reducing youth and community problems. Explaining these connections, and how the nature and scope of funding and services for youths need to change in acknowledgment of them, requires succinct answers to several basic questions.

Q: Why Youth Development?

Because prevention and treatment, while important, are inadequate goals. Problem-free is not fully prepared.

In talking about prevention over the past decade, we have applied a basic public health model that suggests we must treat those who have the problem or disease, must modify the attitudes and habits of those whose behavior suggests they may be at risk of contracting the problem, and must educate those not yet involved. Cancer treatments, smoking cessation, and anti-smoking campaigns reflect this three-tiered public health approach to lung cancer. The public health model is a triage approach that says we have to do all three things and that just doing one or two is not enough.

The model has merit and has been heavily applied to the array of youth problems—originally substance abuse and most recently violence. It has brought legitimacy to the idea of prevention. But it is not enough. When applied to more complex individual issues such as violence, unemployment, early pregnancy, it limits strategies because of its focus. When we talk about prevention, we are talking in terms of problems. But no matter how early we commit to addressing them, there is something fundamentally limiting about having everything point to a problem. In the final analysis we do not assess people in terms of problems, but in terms of potential. Case in point. If I introduced an employer to a young person I worked with by saying, "Here's Katib. He's not a drug user. He's not in a gang. He's not a dropout. He's not a teen father. Please hire him." The employer would respond, "That's great. But what does he know, what can he do?" If we cannot define—and do not give young people ample opportunities to define the desired skills, values, attitudes, knowledge, and commitments as forcefully as we can define what we don't want, we will fail. Prevention is an inadequate goal. Problem-free is not fully prepared.

In thinking about vulnerable, disadvantaged, or marginalized youths (or families or communities), it is often assumed that the first step is to fix problems. The problems must be addressed. But it is a commitment to development—the offering of relationships, networks, challenges, opportunities to contribute—that motivates growth and change.

Because academic and vocational competence, while critical, are 1) not enough and 2) not attainable without the development of a broader set of skills, values, and commitments and connections.

What are the goals we as a society have for young people? Beyond the specific goal of staying out of trouble, the policy literature usually contains broad statements about how we went young people to be good citizens, good neighbors, good workers, and good parents. The academic and programmatic literatures usually push further, articulating general lists of competencies that we want for young people. These go beyond academic competence. The Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development and numerous other commissions and organizations define a generic set of competencies that broaden academic competence to cognitive or intellectual competence and also include employability—good vocational skills, career knowledge and attitudes; physical and emotional health; civic, social and cultural competence.

The problem is that we have not established developmental benchmarks or defined the steps needed to acquire this fuller range of competencies . As end goals, high school and post-secondary education and employment are the primary measures of "developmental success." Consequently, the educational field is littered with benchmarks—individual benchmarks such as being on grade, passing courses, achievement tests; national benchmarks such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress—and vocational experts and the business community are developing vocational indicators of vocational competence or readiness. But definitions of competence in the other areas are blurry at best. In these areas, success is skill largely defined as lack of problems (e.g., pregnancy, violent or delinquent behavior, gang involvement, open racism). Clearly a key task in linking prevention with development is broadening our definition of desired/expected competencies beyond academic skills and employment. Shifting goals from gang prevention to civic involvement for example, requires a fairly dramatic shift in strategies.

But broadening the definition of competencies is only half the challenge. Paralleling the broadening of our definition of expected competencies has to be an acceptance of the importance of a second set of outcomes—those that allow young people to be not only competent, but connected, caring and committed. In addition to skills, young people must have a solid sense of safety and structure, membership and belonging, mastery and sense of purpose, responsibility and self-worth. We have to acknowledge the importance of Maslow's basic needs hierarchy and the interconnections between the development of confidence and the development and application of competence.

Defining competence or youth outcomes solely in terms of the competencies and knowledge that we want young people to have, and not in terms of the broader psycho-social components that make them confident young men and women, limits our strategies and undermines our chances of success.

Q: Why Community and Youth Development?

Because youth development requires inputs that are best supplied by the family, neighbors, and community.

The literature on factors influencing youth development suggests seven key inputs. There is steady attention to the sizable inequities in two of the seven key inputs—access to basic care and services that are appropriate, affordable, and, if necessary, confidential, as well as to high quality instruction and training. The interminable inequities in these inputs across race, gender, and income require sustained attention. But there are other inequities that can serve to exacerbate these more obvious differences. Safe, stable places are important. Such a place can—and should—be home. It can be a religious organization. It can be school. It can be the community center. Also critical are opportunities to develop sustained, caring relationships and social and strategic networks; challenging experiences that are appropriate, diverse, and sufficiently intense; and opportunities for real participation and involvement in the full range of community life—not just picking up trash on Saturdays.

Development requires engagement. It is fostered through relationships, influenced by environments and triggered by participation. And it is both ongoing and resilient. We cannot just intervene at one point and assume all will be fine; neither can we with good conscience not intervene, assuming that it is too late. This need for constancy in relationships, environments and engagement means that those best positioned to influence development are the "natural actors" in youths' lives—family, peers, neighbors, and community institutions. Relationships, environment, and participation are the essence of what defines community. These key things can be artificially structured—young people can be assigned mentors, bussed to safe and stimulating environments, and required to do service. But these key ingredients are primarily found in and generated by the community. Programs and organizations do have an impact on youths' lives, but this impact is either amplified or dampened by the quality and congruence of what else is going on in young people's families, peer groups, and neighborhoods. The impact of family and community life on youth development is unchallenged. There are, as always, young people who "beat the odds," but it is the differences in family and community that determine the odds.

Because community development requires an investment in and by youths.

Increasingly, definitions of community development as development of economic and physical capital are giving way to broader definitions that balance these resources against investments in human and social capital—residents with good individual skills and strong interpersonal ties. Investments in youths are some of the most important investments to be made.

Too often, however, when young people are factored into the equations for community development, they are factored in as deficits. Youth violence, delinquency, and gangs are seen as signs that a community is not worth investing in. Investment in solutions to youth problems is seen as a necessary component of broader investments in community stabilization and rebuilding. Long-term community development, however, requires not only an investment in building the human and social capital of young people, but a commitment to using that capital as it is being built and to see participation in community problem-solving as the best way to build skills and connections.

Community investments in knowing, training, and engaging youths should not be seen as "sunken costs"—the paybacks are sizable. There is ample evidence that engagement of youths in community problem-solving benefits both the youths and the community. There is also evidence that community engagement in youth development has benefits. Communities that rally around their youths find it easier to rally around other issues.

Q: Why Community Youth Development?

Because programs are not enough. Services are not enough. Intervention and treatment are not enough. Professionals are not enough.

Young people do not grow up in programs, they grow up in families and communities. Resiliency research has demonstrated that young people who "beat the odds'' have many of the components of confidence just described (good social and problem-solving skills, a sense of independence and purpose) and have, somewhere in their lives, caring adults, high expectations, and opportunities for meaningful participation and contribution. We need to scan youths' environments for these types of ingredients. Scanning the community for programs does not yield an accurate reading of the community resources available, just as assessing youths for problems never yields an accurate read of potential.

Community Youth Development, the term adopted by the National Network signals a renewed commitment to a philosophy that moves beyond programs, services, and treatment. At its core are a set of principles that "require orienting ourselves to thinking about youth development and community responsibility in a way that demands that all youths, especially those who are troubled and in trouble, be given the opportunity to finish the business of growing up—regardless of their life circumstances." (Hughes, 1994)

Next Steps

Broaden the goals. Goals determine strategies. When we talk about problems, we end up talking about programs and services and we think about interventions in discrete blocks of time. When we talk about development, we end up talking about supports and opportunities, and recognize the importance of continuity, challenge, and choice. As discussed, rethinking strategies requires re-prioritizing goals. Applying what we know about youth development suggests some obvious strategies. We have to broaden the goals. Not just school and jobs, but health, social, and civic competencies. Not just competencies, but the confidence and connectedness needed to use them well.

Broaden the practices. Services are not enough. All youths need a mix of services—things that are done to or for them (e.g., health care, housing), supports (things that are done with them to help build their capacity for decision-making, resource identification, problem-solving) and opportunities (things that can be done by them to build and apply skills, gain and offer experiences). The mix will change, but if supports and opportunities are not a part of the formula, youths will not engage and development will not occur.

Broaden the number of actors. Deprofessionalize youth work. Engage and empower families, neighbors, residents and youths to acknowledge and address individual and community problems. Make absolute commitments to using the organization as a catalyst for change.

Go beyond traditional volunteer models to be change agents. Community and youth organizations often lament that the institutions that have the budgets (schools, public social services agencies, juvenile justice departments) are not in the community. But programs and organizations have to recognize that there are important layers, which have to be acknowledged and respected, between them and young people. Families, peers, neighbors are more than program volunteers, they are key influences in young peoples' lives who need to be engaged.

Target without trapping. Resources need to be targeted to maximize impact and to match the needs of young people with the resources available. But targeting often involves outside judgments not only about who needs resources but what resources are most needed. Youths, families, and communities are trapped in dependency or boredom when it is assumed that those who have problems have no potential, no solutions. Vulnerable youths and families need opportunities to create, contribute and care just as much as they need counseling, and crisis services. Assuming that "fixing" linearly precedes "development" reduces the likelihood that either will happen.

Define and evaluate the whole. Anyone who has worked intensely on any discrete youth problem (e.g., teen pregnancy) learns quickly that the problem is intertwined with education, with opportunity structures, with family connection and support, and with a range of developmental issues which cannot be ignored if any intervention is to be successful. Rather than applying our understanding of human motivation, however, we have taken a complex process, divided it into small units, developed programs to address the discrete parts, and then reacted with surprise when there is little overall improvement. Two things happen when we focus too heavily on a single problem. We weaken the possibilities of both documenting impact (by tracking only a narrow set of outcomes) and having impact (by focusing too narrowly on a specific set of inputs). Many programs argue that they are comprehensive in approach and broad in services, but all should be evaluated against some basic outcomes that reflect the full set of competencies and connections desired.

Build the core first. Another consequence of our discrete, problem-based approach is that core supports and opportunities never are really fully developed. It is easier to get funding for problem prevention curricula and counselors than for core programming and staff. These activities are often developed on a shoestring budget and never reported to the funding agency, for they are deemed outside the defined scope of work. However, given what we know about the adolescent development process, we need those core supports and opportunities to be relatively stable and accessible if anything else is to work. To achieve these core supports as sidebars of a targeted program is to marginalize what should be central and to focus on what should be more at the margins of our efforts.

Be advocates as well as service providers. The list of key inputs is intentionally place-generic. It states what is needed, but does not specify where it is found. If young persons can get all that naturally, on their block, within family and from neighbors through an assortment of informal experiences, then a carefully-structured program is not needed. If, however, these things are not available in the neighborhood in sufficient quantity and quality, then programs—structured offerings of services, supports, and opportunities delivered to achieve defined goals—should be created. But these programs should follow one of two roads. They should either become a part of the community—permanent, indigenous institutions—or they should work to strengthen the families, neighbors, and community institutions sufficiently so that the program no longer will be needed.

The mistake that all too often is made is that we, the professionals, come in, put the program in place and believe it will solve the problem. With full understanding of the constraints involved, we have to acknowledge that services are not enough. At some point, programs and staff who are not working as hard to make things happen naturally within the family and community as they are to make them happen inside their doors burn out. If programs, over time, do not work to transform themselves and/or the communities in which they operate, they shift from being a part of the solution to being a part of the problem.

The commitment to youth and community development—exemplified not only by NNY's commitment to CYD training for organizational change, but also by the stellar work of local organizations and networks across the country—is growing steadily. The shifts needed in philosophy, program, practice and pacing are hard and require constant monitoring. But the payoffs are impressive and the alternatives in neighborhoods and with young people where the organization is not just trying to supplement family and community but substitute for them are professional burnout and community atrophy.

References

(This article expands on portions of the text prepared for the 17th Annual Gisela Konopka Lecture, delivered by Karen Pittman in May 1995 at the University of Minnesota.)

New Designs for Youth Development is a quarterly publication, published by the National Network for Youth, dedicated to voicing progressive, humane, and caring approaches to the development of youth and community. To subscribe (in the US), send $29 along with your name, organization, address, and phone number to: New Designs, 1319 F St. NW, Suite 401, Washington, D.C. 20078-1449.

Back to Youth Index