Engaged Youth » Youth Management Options

Youth Management Options

April 23rd, 2008 at 06:20pm Toby Campbell Permalink

There are many challenges that surround the engagement of youth in the management and editorial components of youth engagement sites. PSO partners are actively discussing different ways we may be able to succeed in this capacity.

We’re currently partnering with other local organizations to get their youth involved in using the PSO site when it launches, and we are running school-year and summer youth content production teams out of the YMCA. We’re simultaneously engaged in an active discussion about how to develop youth governance of the site. We have been discussing different strategies and possibilities for engaging youth in the management and editorial process, and we would love to spark a conversation about recommended approaches to this issue.

Do we keep youth editorial and governance teams separate, or do we combine them into regional youth teams? Are team members elected by the youth who use the site, or do we recruit them through an application process housed in partnering organizations? When and how do we kick off this process? Feel free to weigh in on the discussion!

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, youth management

5 Comments Add your own

1. Tony Streit | May 23rd, 2008 at 5:50 am

The a major challenge for any project like this is determining how much of the work should be managed by adult leaders and how much is driven by youth participants. It is a challenge that educators facilitating youth media making have struggled with going back 30 years or more. You want young people to be empowered to speak on their own behalf, tell compelling stories and be truly creative, but you also want to set some expectations around quality and consistency so the work moves forward. I usually tell educators in this situation that their roll is primarily to set the boundaries for the projects so that young people can really be expressive but at the same time are most likely to succeed.

With regard to things like rule setting and collective decision making, I have always found that getting the buy-in of ever young person involved is critical. While there are often a few young people who are highly engaged and involved, often generating a great deal of content and original ideas, the expectations of who does what and how everyone should be treated need to be established by everyone and ultimately enforced by everyone. The best youth projects are ones where the participants not only lead the creative aspects of the work but also manage the relationship building as well. That doesn’t mean that the educator just sits on the side lines, though. Guiding the process, promoting discussion when there is conflict, and most importantly, posing challenging questions to the team to get them to reflect on their actions are key.

As for keeping editorial and governance separate, I’m not sure that’s necessary unless you’re concerned about conflict of interest. Regional teams might be the better way to go as they would allow greater opportunity to blend face-to-face and online interaction. In terms of how members are elected, perhaps there’s a way to build a team that comes both from the organizations as well as the website in hopes of balancing things out. I’m assuming by now the process is well underway, but you might want to develop a plan to continually fill slots on whatever teams you develop as even the best youth projects have young people dropping out over time.
2. Toby Campbell | June 6th, 2008 at 9:45 am

Thank you for your comments, Tony. You point to the important challenge of balancing youth and adult governance of the project, and I think actively involving youth in relationship building around the project is an excellent idea. We will continue to think through these questions and issues as our regional youth teams begin operating this summer.
3. Allison Fine | June 10th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Very interesting questions, Toby. I would caution about overthinking some of the processes. It’s terribly important to lower the barriers to entry as far as possible and allow young people to engage whenever and however they want to - whether it’s in management or editorial. And, as Tony points out, it is more likely that a small handful of people will do the bulk of the work on both sides.

I recommend regional teams and I would focus mainly on how to support young people, whether it’s 1 or 20 or 100, continuously add content and engage their social networks in the project. Keeping young people excited about a project takes a lot of energy but, of course, is the key to long term success. So . . . .good luck with that!!

Allison
4. Lance Bennett | June 12th, 2008 at 9:05 am

Thanks Tony and Allison! We should think more about how to involve our Becoming Citizens interns in the relationship building process. This program places interns in community youth organizations. Next year they will be sharing digital media tools we are developing to enable a variety of content production and advocacy activities. We should coordinate this with recruitment for project management teams.
5. Tony Searght | October 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am

Our 4-12 year old Youth Investors are very much engaged in what we do because we alow them to choose the direction that their outreach should take and that keeps it relevant for them.