Young people around the world are standing against sexual abuse in many ways. They are joining forces for policy change at state and federal levels; educating their peers and adults; and creating new cultures within families, throughout schools and across communities that do not tolerate abuse, victimization or discrimination against children, youth or adults who are sexually abused.
Sexual abuse is an abuse of power and a betrayal of trust. Sexual abuse happens when anyone is forced or tricked into sexual activity by anyone else. Sexual abuse can be physical, visual and verbal. Examples include sexual touching, oral-genital contact, rape, incest, any penetration with objects or body parts, making a child touch someone else’s private parts or play sexual (“pants down”) games, exposing private parts to a child, showing pornography/making child watch sexual acts, taking sexual pictures, watching a child undress or go to the bathroom and obscene/sexual language.
Ways Youth are Changing the World Focusing on Sexual Abuse
Youth as Advocates — Standing up for what they know is right requires youth stand against what they know it wrong. As advocates, youth are making the issue of sexual abuse obvious, apparent and meaningful to policy-makers, law enforcement, the courts, and others everyday. They are letting their stand inform land-lasting conversations and moving essential ideas into the mainstream.
Youth-led Training — By training their peers, younger people and adults, youth are leading the education revolution focused on sexual abuse. They are helping their siblings, parents, and teachers understand youth voice in this area, and moving the agenda forward.
Youth/Adult Partnerships — Forming and sustaining equitable youth/adult partnerships is a vital key for a lot of youth engagement activities focused on ending sexual assault and sexual abuse. Through transparency, mutual respect, trust and constantly meaningful involvement, young people and adults learn to work together to transform the world.
Things Youth Need to Change the World Focusing on Sexual Abuse
Education — Young people want to learn what it takes to successfully challenge and hold back sexual abuse and sexual assault. Through comprehensive sexual education and learning not to assign males roles to assault girls and women, education can change the world.
Research— Substantive research of all sorts can empower youth to take action to against sexual assault and sexual abuse. Learning how to read research, utilize it most effectively and interpret it for others can be essential.
Motivation— Simply changing youth to make a difference isn’t enough. Instead, we’ve found that young people need four pillars to change the world: Policymaking; Targeted educational activities; Substantial assessment, and; Practical culture transformation activities that honor older knowledge and infusing younger innovation.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support youth engagement ending sexual abuse in your community or organization, contact us.
The practice of teachers assigning students letter or number grades to illustrate how students are performing is an outmoded method, left over the times when schools were regarded as factories, teachers were supervisors, and students were workers. Not only is grading just outdated, research has shown that grading students is damaging as well. Research has shown that grades can:
Cause students to regard learning as a chore
Avoid challenging tasks
Think less deeply
Fall apart when they fail, and
To value ability more than effort.
In today’s society the process is as important as the outcome; schools should reflect that.
“The students, motivated/rewarded (or not) by grades, try to shape their writing so as to get a better grade, and that may become their primary goal in some cases. In turn, the teachers feel grading forces them to give up some of their role as “fair-minded judges and sympathetic readers.” – Lotto and Smith in College Education.
Ways Youth Can Change the World Without Grades
Teaching Classes — One of the best ways young people can learn is through teaching. Young people of all ages can teach people younger than themselves, the same age and older than themselves.
Reforming Schools — Becoming actively engaged as partners in school reform at the local, district, state and federal levels can allow students to advocate against grades in powerful, effective ways.
Youth as Education Advocates — If youth stand against grades, they should make student voice heard to education decision-makers everywhere. Providing substantive alternatives and stepping into action are priorities.
Tools Youth Need to Change the World Without Grades
Inspiration— Children and youth need stories to motivate them against grades, while teachers and school leaders need the vision to eliminate them.
Education— Leaving the traditional grade structure of schools can be challenging, but with education and training in alternative scoring teachers and students can become committed to not relying on these false measures of academic success.
Youth/Adult Partnerships— Working in classrooms, across schools and throughout the education system can be a key to eliminate grading forever. Fostering and sustaining substantial youth/adult partnerships throughout the education system can be a powerful way to do that.
“Alternatives to Traditional Grading” – A summary of different practices from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Kansas State University.
SoundOut Student Activism Map – Find out where students are organizing to challenge schools to listen to student voice and engage students as partners in school improvement. Includes examples and organizations from across the US.
Rise Against Terrible Schools – While there are many different ideas on how schools should work, we share one common goal: changing schools for the better. Whether that means getting students to unschool or homeschool or just simply campaigning for some rights of students in schools, the goal of RATS is to students work together so they can be more effective.
Students Against Testing – Students Against Testing was created to be a strong force against the score-obsessed education machine known as standardized testing. At the same time, SAT also exists as an advocate for bringing positive, creative and real-life learning activities into the schools. SAT believes that for the reasons stated below urgent action from the student body itself is the most direct way to counteract the boredom and petty competition that currently plagues the schools.
Alternative Education Resource Organization – AERO advances learner-centered approaches to education. AERO is considered by many to be the primary hub of communications and support for educational alternatives around the world.
“The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement” by Alfie Kohn in School Administrator. This article (and this author) is completely committed to eliminating grades. The author is a widely regarded researcher who has written extensively about the dilemmas of “Rewards and Punishments” (the title of one of his many books) in schools.
“Bibliography Reviews Grading Practices” – A great summary of literature about grading in the form of a short summary of a large bibliography about grading.
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Share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support eliminating classroom grades in your school or community, contact us.
No one wants to meet roadblocks to changing the world, but when we do, we need to know how to overcome them. The tools we need already exist- we just need to find them. Sometimes everything we need is within reach; other times, our friends and family have them. The things we need to change the world are almost always in our communities, even if we can’t see them.
The following questions are designed to help you explore why, what, how, and where you can find the resources you need to change the world. Give careful thought to why and when you need these resources.
WHO needs to be involved?!?
Who does our action immediately affect? Who does it indirectly affect?
Who else wants to see change in your community? What do they stand for? Who and what do they stand against?
What people do we need to take action? Are we the people most affected by the problem? Are we engaging the people most affected? Do we need a small team? A large crowd? Mass mobilization? City-wide action? A national effort? A global movement?
What specific jobs can specific people do to get our aims done? Why do we need these jobs done? Background researching, phone calling, web outreach, group meetings.
Who can help us? Friends, people we know, people we don’t know, felllow students, teachers, college professors, parents, community activists?
What skills do people in our community have?
WHAT are we trying to accomplish?
Have we explored our assumptions?
Do we have reasonable, accomplishable goals?
Are our goals measurable- can we see the outcomes?
WHEN are we trying to make change happen?
Do we have a timeline set?
Do we have reasonable expectations?
Have we asked people who have done this before?
WHERE are we trying to make change?
What is the scope of our action- our neighborhood, city, state, nation, or is it global? Why work beyond our community?
Where does our action immediately affect?
What are the traditional places in your community to get the resources you need? Schools, churches, businesses, community groups, foundations…
What are the nontraditional places in your community to get the resources you need? Family, friends, children, youth, seniors, activist groups..
HOW do we get the job done?!?
Do we need to learn more about the issue? Conduct background research? Map our community?
What can our culture provide to our action? What customs, language, morals, literature, dance, art, poetry, philosophy, religion, ideals and rituals can help us?
What physical materials are needed? Where can we acquire those materials? What are the instruments, tools, machines, clothes, or other things we need? Why do we need them?
Do we need space for our work? Can we meet at someone’s house, in our school, at the community center, or in the park?
Before you ask anyone for anything, give careful thought to why and when you need it- your first “ask” might be your only one.
Document the reasons you need certain items. This may be useful for future “asks”. It might look like this: “(4) gardening hoes – Two for each community garden plot” or like this: “Conducted a community drive for spray paint for a new youth-created graffiti mural, intended to establish ownership and belonging for youth downtown.”
What is the expected outcome if you get what you need? Make sure you let givers know that, as well as the recipients of your intended action.
Activist Learning is an intentional strategy for creating knowledge characterized by taking action to realize just relationships that transform unequal power structures in our personal, social, political, environmental, spiritual, and economic lives. This page describes what it is, how it happens, where it occurs and what difference it can make.
This is accomplished by linking critical reflection to activism with intentional opportunities to connect the action to self-reflection, self-discovery, and the creation and comprehension of values, skills, and knowledge.
What is Activist Learning?
Activist Learning can be a youth-only, actively encouraging self-direction and self-education through community activism. Activist Learning with young people can also happen in partnership with adult allies, although in this situation the emphasis should always be on youth-led action, with opportunities for adult-shared learning facilitation optional.
Why Activist Learning?
Activist Learning can challenge ideas that educators can deposit knowledge into the empty minds of students by engaging co-learners as the co-creators of knowledge.
Activist Learning can engage young people and educators as co-facilitators of learning, encouraging young people to become knowledge creators and adults to become allies.
Activist Learning can empower activist/learners to articulate themselves in a way that is relevant to their lives and their roles as agents of change.
Activist Learning can move activist/learners from acts of charity and sympathy towards solidarity and allyship.
Activist Learning can allow activist/learners to…
Prioritize ethics and a work towards social justice;
Challenge the ways schools perpetuate power structures in our society;
Support teachers in reflecting on their complicity in this perpetuation;
Show students that knowledge is socially constructed – and is not the ‘truth’;
Assist students in deconstructing knowledge to see how and why it is that way and whose purposes it serves, teaching them to “read the world differently” and “resist the abuse of power and privilege” that abounds (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 49);
“Create new forms of knowledge through … breaking down disciplinary boundaries and creating new spaces where knowledge can be produced” (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 50)
Activist Learning — A community learning approach characterized by people taking action to realize a society based on just relationships by seeking to transform unequal power structures in our personal, social, political and economic lives.
Adult Ally — Adults in unity or connection with young people in personal relationships, as in friendship or partnership.
Collective — Flat organizational structure where the all members of a group are responsible for or involved in making all decisions. There are no ranks or structures that make one person more powerful than another
Community Learning— A knowledge-creating practice in which traditional student-teacher roles are eliminated; co-learners are simultaneously encouraged to facilitate and receive knowledge.
Critical Reflection— Thinking about what we are thinking and doing, and then acting on what we have thought about; A circle of learning that promotes continuous action for social justice.
Praxis — Bringing together critical reflection and concrete action with/in a community in order to transform it.
Social Justice— The practice of putting democracy into daily practice with regard for the social conditions within a community. Often associated with, but not limited to, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, poverty, and discrimination against persons with disabilities.
Popular Education — A space where young people and adults can learn together to foster a more equitable, just and democratic world. Facilitators use social justice, youth empowerment and active learning to foster and support real, positive and empowering relationships that teach and learn.
Solidarity — A union of interests, purposes, or empathies between people; a fellowship of responsibilities and interests.
Elements of Activist Learning
Activist Learning doesn’t just happen. There are critical elements that make Activist Learning the powerful, purposeful tool it is. Here are some of them:
Activist Learning develops communities as places that promote radical democracy, where diverse, consensus-based, non-hierarchical and non-discriminatory learning takes place.
Activist Learning fosters critical analysis of institutions and social structures, takes responsive action to promote justice and equity, teaches the history of social movements.
Activist Learning encourages learning to cross disciplines, issues, cultures and communities in order to foster knowledge creation, challenge and exploration.
Activist Learning honors and accentuates life-long learning that engages learners through community-based, innovative and effective pedagogy.
Activist Learning uses technology and media as liberating tools that support community needs.
Activist Learning in Schools
Following are a few suggestions for integrating Activist Learning in schools:
Organize a class project with all of the elements of Activist Learning.
Students can research news stories about social injustice by collecting and analyzing news clippings or Internet printouts that portray unjust sentiments, statements, or actions in their area.
Students can collect accounts of protective and supportive acts toward people of color, low-income people, differently-abled people, environmentally sensitive areas, etc.
Create a class mission statement about responding to one’s fellow citizens in a productive way. This can be an opportunity to brainstorm and model consensus-building.
Assign an essay comparing contemporary events to analogous events in history.
Dedicate an hour every week or month for students to locate and read publications written for largely minority audiences (e.g., Asian Week, Hispanic Review, Black Enterprise, Indian Country Today).
Work with interested students to form a Student Civil Rights Team in your school. Student Civil Rights Teams work in schools or other settings to teach their peers about prejudice, discrimination, hate crimes, and protecting victims or potential victims.
Activist Learning in Communities
YOUR voice is YOUR power! You’re an activist, and you know you’re learning! Around the world people are learning through activism and grabbing hold of learning and owning what they know.
And by the way – you probably aren’t already doing this. Activist Learning requires several important elements named above, and most groups don’t have them all. But you can, and that’s why we offer these examples.
Young people always learn through activism. By working with friends and partnering with adult allies, young people are developing powerful, effective Activist Learning projects. The following are stories of young people learning through activism (click on the heading for the link):
Youth Act! Students Testify on Mayor’s Budget – Read this story from 2000 about young people in Washington DC who learned about homeless issues and advocated to the city’s Mayor for change.
Global Uprising: Stories of a New Generation of Activists – Read excerpts from this exciting book that documents young activists work today. The stories on this page include the personal narratives of young people standing up for peace, the environment, and for social justice.
Talk to Us. Listen. Take Us Seriously. – Eighteen young people from small communities across America—from the Mississippi Delta to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the Navajo Nation to the northern California coast—speak about their efforts to promote youth leadership and voice in their schools and communities. They recount their successes while offering pointed advice on ways adults can partner more effectively with kids.
YOU can get inspired, get informed, get active and learn something! The following websites offer great information to promote young people taking action – all you’ve got to do is make something of it! You can do that with Activist Learning.
Summary
Young people have increasingly been at the front of rallies, marches, and activism around the world over the last several decades. Children and youth organize, research, educate, analyze, and advocate for change around the world through local, national, and international movements. While this action is powerful and often effective, there has been one component that is usually missing: the intentional learning.
For several years The Freechild Project has been researching youth-led activism in several areas, including environmental activism. Using this research and our own experiences in activism, we have developed an exciting new model for youth engagement in social change work called “Activist Learning.”
We define Activist Learning with young people as an intentional strategy for creating knowledge characterized by taking action to realize just relationships that transforms unequal power structures in our personal, social, political, environmental, spiritual, and economic lives.
Activist Learning is a process that…
…develops communities as places that promote radical democracy, where diverse, consensus-based, non-hierarchical and non-discriminatory learning takes place.
…fosters critical analysis of institutions and social structures, takes responsive action to promote justice and equity, teaches the history of social movements.
…encourages learning to cross disciplines, issues, cultures and communities in order to foster knowledge creation, challenge and exploration
…honors and accentuates life-long learning that engages learners through community-based, innovative and effective pedagogy
…uses technology and media as liberatory tools to support community needs
Elements of Activist Learning include shared assumptions and purposes; negotiated co-learning goals agreed upon among activists; common action and learning (“praxis”); continual critical reflection, and; emphasis on co-learner/community voice.
Activist Learning can be a youth-directed, youth-only activity that encourages self-direction and self-education through community activism. Activist Learning with young people can also happen in partnership with adult allies, although in this situation the emphasis should always be on youth-led action, with opportunities for adult-shared learning facilitation optional.
Activist Learning challenges the idea that educators can deposit knowledge into the empty minds of students by engaging co-learners as the co-creators of knowledge. It engages young people and educators as co-facilitators of learning, encouraging young people to become knowledge creators and adults to become allies. Activist Learning empowers young activist/learners to articulate themselves in a way that is relevant to their lives and their roles as agents of change. Finally, and most importantly to our work, it moves activist/learners from acts of charity and sympathy towards solidarity and allyship.
Recent studies have shown that Activist Learning can allow activist/learners to:
Prioritize ethics and a work towards social justice;
Challenge the ways schools perpetuate power structures in our society;
Support teachers in reflecting on their complicity in this perpetuation;
Show students that knowledge is socially constructed – and is not the ‘truth’;
Assist students in deconstructing knowledge to see how and why it is that way and whose purposes it serves, teaching them to “read the world differently” and “resist the abuse of power and privilege” that abounds (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 49);
“Create new forms of knowledge through … breaking down disciplinary boundaries and creating new spaces where knowledge can be produced” (Henry Giroux, 1991, p. 50) [From Con/testing Learning Models by Gaell Hildebrand (1999).]
While taking action is powerful, learning from it is even more important. There are millions of people who are working to save the environment and change the world everyday – shouldn’t you make your effort today?
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support youth engagement in activist learning in your community or organization, contact us.
Growing up in small villages and towns or on farms and in other rural areas can present young people with considerable challenges. However, rural youth can be vital to transforming their communities, building ownership and engaging young people to stop the rural brain drain.
There’s no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people. — Al Sharpton
Ways Rural Youth are Changing the World
Youth as Recruiters — Building their own opportunities to transform their environments is essential to children and youth engagement. After they’ve planned engaging programs and activities, young people can recruit their peers, younger people and adults. As facilitators, evaluators and decision-makers throughout their communities, rural youth can change the world.
Youth as Mentors — Engaging youth as mentors can allow children, other youth and adults in rural to become meaningfully influential and purposeful. Substantive activities for rural youth can focus on fostering community, building youth/adult partnerships and transforming organizations, schools and rural areas.
Servant Leadership — Learning to lead others can mean learning to serve, too. Servant leadership can build the humility, empowerment and engagement of young people throughout rural areas in unique ways. They can become more capable and involved than before, and can develop the ability to meet the needs of their areas in unique and important ways.
Things Rural Youth Need to Change the World
Training — Learning practical skills and relevant knowledge they can apply to change rural communities is essential for children and youth. Whether focusing on communication, teambuilding, networking, problem-solving or change management, young people can be essential partners for community development in rural areas.
Technology — Weaving together the power and potential of young people in rural areas can be easier through technology. Cell phones, texting, social media and the Internet can be powerful tools to reach across broad distances and other barriers.
Inspiration — Discovering the roots of action and finding motivation to take action can move young people from being passive recipients of adult actions towards becoming active partners in social change.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support rural youth engagement through your community or organization, contact us.
Despite how they’re often treated, young people in the foster care system are powerful beyond measure. Even though they rarely have significant and meaningful opportunities to share their concerns and ideas or make meaningful decisions about the systems that control their lives, youth and foster care often need each other. Transforming foster care by empowering children and youth in foster care is absolutely vital. Rather than focusing on speaking for children and youth or doing things to children and youth, the foster care system should take action with young people to improve the system and outcomes.
Don’t try to silence me or my thoughts on being adopted. I have a voice, and everything I say is the truth and valid. I have been through it, therefore, I know. This is my story. — Source unknown
Ways Youth can Change the World through Foster Care
Youth as Decision-Makers — Young people in foster care should have substantial opportunities to make decisions for themselves. Adults should teach children and youth healthy and successful decision-making skills, and facilitate decision-making for every children and youth in foster care to experience personal, group and systemic decision-making, too.
Youth Evaluation — Positioning youth as evaluators can provide meaningful, applicable and real ways to change the world through foster care. Whether evaluating their placements, support services, counselors or other individuals and activities that affect them directly, or integrating them throughout community-wide evaluation activities, young people in foster care can share powerful assessments of their world.
Community Youth Development — In addition to teaching foster youth independent living skills, it is essential they learn how to rely on others throughout their communities in healthy, supportive and empowering ways. Interdependent living skills can be learned through community youth development strategies that are designed to integrate foster children and foster youth throughout their communities, whether geographic, cultural or otherwise.
Things Youth Need to Change the World through Foster Care
Opportunities — Foster care is an adult-driven system with adult-determined goals operated by adults for the benefit of adults, all focused on children and youth. Young people need substantial, relevant and meaningful opportunities to affect the system. These should not be tokenistic, belittling, demeaning, manipulative or otherwise negative. Instead, they should be equitable, geared towards youth/adult partnerships and transformative for everyone involved, including children, youth and adults.
Training — Whether they’re learning how to transform foster care in group homes, in nonprofits, through government programs, with foundations, or through the media, children and youth in foster care should have significant training. Their skills should be developed to ensure successful action, while their knowledge should be shared to encourage meaningful personal development.
Technology — Using every technology available to them, children and youth in foster care can change the world. Texting can increase communication and community building among youth in foster care, while social media can help ensure that foster childrens’ voices are heard. Building websites and forming organizations online can further systemic goals focused on youth engagement, while access to the Internet can be a building block for further action.
“Mississippi Youth Voice” by the Mississippi Teen Advisory Board for Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative
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Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support youth engagement in foster care in your community or organization, contact us.
Public health is made of organized efforts around the world that aim at to prevent disease and promote health across our communities. Tied together through education, action, evaluation and advocacy, youth and public health are addressing a lot of issues, including HIV/AIDs, smoking, pregnancy prevention, and more.
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito. — Source unknown
Ways Youth can Change the World focusing on Public Health
Youth as Teachers — Young people can be some of the best public health educators, whether teaching their parents, their siblings, other young people or adults throughout their communities. Engaging youth as teachers can quickly normalize activities, knowledge and attitudes that are different or new for their communities in ways adults cannot, and can reach people others can’t, either.
Social Media— Texting public health messages and sharing public health knowledge with their peers and other throughout social media can help youth be powerful communicators and recruiters. Social media can also help youth educators build community around their issues, roles and regions, too.
Youth-Led Activism— When adults won’t listen to youth voice or allow youth participation, young people can make their voices heard through activism. Whether they are organizing communities, leading sit-ins, advocating for policy change or building online movements, young people can be powerful activists for issues that matter to them.
Things Youth Need to Change the World focusing on Public Health
Education — Young people should know the basic, elemental parts of public health all of the time, no matter who they are, where they live or how much money their families and communities have. However, to change the world with public health, children and youth should learn critical thinking skills, build their knowledge base, and expand their abilities.
Youth/Adult Partnerships — Working with adults as partners is a sure way to change the world through public health. Young people can teach adults about issues that matter while receiving the support, encouragement and knowledge of adults.
Funding — Securing and sustaining funding is vital for youth-led public health action. Changing the world through active engagement in the issues that affect them most, children and youth deserve the fiscal support they need for programs, activities and outcomes that reflect the importance of public health throughout our lives and communities.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support youth engagement in public health through your community or organization, contact us.
Engaging youth as mediators teaches young people to understand conflict within themselves and others. Discovering how they influence conflict, how to self-manage conflict, and how to identify strategies for calmness and clarity is enhanced by learning listening and speaking skills and how to understand other peoples’ point of view. Youth mediators can help other youth, younger students, and adults to have important conversations in order to become clearer themselves, understand each other’s perspectives, and make decisions about next steps. Youth can change the world as mediators when they apply these skills throughout their lives, including at home, in school, and throughout their communities.
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist. — Indira Gandhi
Ways for Youth + Social Change through Youth Mediation
Youth-Led Programs — Young people can learn the deep parts of conflict resolution, become program designers and managers, and lead their own efforts to promote mediation in their schools and communities. Young people transform relationships when they move past struggle and towards interdependence and community-building.
Youth Courts — Youth courts are powerful tools for young people to develop their own capacity for problem-solving and mediation. Through jurisdiction and official proceedings, youth can reduce recidivism, promote conflict resolution and build communities instead of tearing them apart like traditional juvenile justice programs have.
Youth Managing Adult Staff — When young people participate in hiring, training, supervising and evaluating adult staff, they balance the perceptions of power within organizations and throughout communities. This acts towards mediation by empowering those who are taught, watched and facilitated by adults with the ability to rectify their challenges with adults, laying a substantive foundation for youth/adult partnerships.
Needs for Youth + Social Change through Youth Mediation
Education — Comprehensive youth mediation programs should include education for youth and adults on how to: Identify goals and outcomes; Identify and engage stakeholders, Create a team to plan and develop the program, Develop systems including referral, intake, mediation coordination; and Train students to become mediators and providing continuing education. Programs should also receive on-going technical assistance. Youth mediator programs should have immediately positive impact on conflict and be sustainable.
Opportunities — Young people need substantial opportunities to be mediators in the places they spend the most time, including at home, in schools and throughout their communities. They also need real adult allies who stand with them for mediation, and support from government agencies, law enforcement and others.
Youth/Adult Partnerships — Real youth/adult partnerships engage young people and adults in equitable relationships that can build the power, purpose and potential of youth mediators. Through transparency, communication, mutual investment and meaningful involvement, young people and adults can transform community culture for the better.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how Freechild Institute can support youth+ social change through youth mediators in your community or organization, contact us.
ALL children and youth are active people who want to be actively involved in learning, teaching and leadership throughout their communities. Responsible adults acknowledge that its not up to young people to become involved; in our adult-driven society, it is adults’ responsibility to engage youth. Project-based learning can give young people meaningful opportunities to move beyond negative participation and become meaningfully involved.
Ways Youth can Change the World through Project-Based Learning
Youth-Led Media — Assuming control when adults act out of control, young people can use media to create their own messages, share youth voice and build community belonging through youth-led media. Whether they use the Internet, social media, video, print media, or otherwise, youth-led media can change the world by positively empowering children and youth to create the messages and share the stories that matter to them.
Youth as Facilitators — Facilitating project-based learning can allow learners to become teachers and leaders, too. Centering on activities that matter to them, youth facilitators might teach their peers, younger learners and adults, too, in a variety of settings, including schools, nonprofits, community centers and other places.
Service Learning — Centering their projects on changing the world in positive, powerful ways and serving other peoples’ agendas can allow students to understand interdependence and community in powerful ways. Service learning connects real service with classroom learning goals, completing the promise of project-based learning in a different way.
Things Youth Need to Change the World through Project-Based Learning
Education — Discovering what project-based learning is empowers many young people in new and powerful ways. Learning how to implement this strategy is powerful too. But when children and youth discover the assumptions behind project-based learning, the realities of facilitating project-based learning, and what it takes to assess and share project-based learning with the world they soar even higher.
Youth/Adult Partnerships — Working together across generations towards creating, completing and fulfilling the promise of project-based learning can empower young people in new ways. Youth/adult partnerships foster youth equity and support mainstreaming in powerful, meaningful ways.
Technology — Using the power of the internet, social media, gaming, texting and other technology can allow young people to change the world through project-based learning. Embracing their everyday technology as a learning device can bring them through indifference and inability towards empowerment and sustainable youth engagement.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support experiential education in your community or organization, contact us.
Young people do not exist in a bubble or a vacuum. Instead, they are members of the communities, families and societies they grow up in, whether or not that is recognized by adults. One strategy for youth to change the world acknowledges this connection. Community youth development weaves the growth of young people as they naturally desire to create change in their surrounding environments into the development of their communities. Actively partnering youth and adults to create new opportunities, youth serve their communities while developing their own skills, knowledge and abilities.
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come to because your liberation is bound up in mine, we can work together. — Lilla Watson
Ways Youth can Change the World through Community Youth Development
Youth-Led Classes — Young people of all ages can teach their peers, younger people and adults how community development works, what community is, where communities exist, and what they can do to create change in their communities. Through this approach, young teachers and facilitators move the levers of social change and can defeat adultism, too.
Service Learning — Service learning deliberately immeshes classroom learning goals into serious community action that meets real needs. Young people can change the world this way by taking ownership of their projects, cultivating positive results and encouraging community-building throughout.
Community Governance — When youth action councils, youth policy-makers, and government committees and commissions engage youth as partners, young people can influence, drive, lead and assess community development.
Things Youth Need to Change the World through Community Youth Development
Education — Community youth development isn’t a naturally occurring phenomenon that automatically progresses young people in communities, villages, towns, cities and regions towards success. Instead, its an academic field of study, a research body, and a deliberate body of work assumed by governments, nonprofits and others. In order to become fully engaged partners, young people should learn as many aspects of that as possible.
Opportunities — Children and youth need practical, applicable and holistic opportunities to participate in community youth development. As the leaders, drivers and motivators of this action, practical opportunities to see real results should occur, along with meaningful opportunities to learn and grow, too.
Funding — While funding is essential for many actions with young people, community youth development is especially dependent on systemic measures to create, grow, sustain and enhance activities and opportunities. Foundations, government agencies and other donors must support community youth development with real investments.
Other tools are out there, too – share your thoughts in the comments below! For more information about how The Freechild Project can support community youth development in your community or organization, contact us.
Freechild Institute 