Sustainers
Sustainers keep youth coming back, deepens their engagement, and shape how young people feel part of something larger than themself.
“Never assume youth don't want to be involved - invite them everywhere to everything and let them decide where their passion and interests are to get involved.”
(Working Group Participant)
There are seven sustainers for youth to take on meaningful roles in an initiative. Sustainers speak to value youth can add through their involvement and can shape into concrete roles youth can take on throughout a project. Take, for example, youth shaping and implementing research: youth can be involved in co-creating an evaluation plan, creating hype around and facilitating data collection, interpreting findings, and recommending solutions based upon findings. These sustainers are by no means an exhaustive list, but reflect roles desired by young people taking part in the working group and ways that are working.
“[Youth] know things adults will never know. They can propose ideas that will be relevant to young people in today's world. If youth weren’t involved, we would completely miss the boat.”
(Working Group Participant)
Adults can create inroads to and support meaningful youth engagement by:
Creating and Connecting Youth to Opportunities
- Create space for youth to be involved and have an impact
- Keep inviting youth and asking youth how they want to be involved
- Synergize efforts across youth life domains (e.g., school, home, virtual)
Adjusting Adult Expectations and Building Adult Capacity
- Adopt an emergent approach, weaving flexibility throughout project phases
- Keep an open mind to how youth could be engaged
- Put yourselves in the shoes of a youth; their interests, passions, and priorities might be different than adults
Building Capacity and Supporting Youth Engagement
- Build youth capacity to lead and have increasingly larger impacts
- Early on, provide ‘micro’ leadership opportunities, which can jumpstart leadership
- Connect youth skillsets and interests to relevant tasks or roles
Championing and Crediting Youth Involvement
- Support the community ‘trailblazers’ who advocate for increased youth engagement
- Give credit to youth for their contribution(s)
- Help youth see their impacts, both small and large
“When they can directly see the output of their contributions ... it's not just hypothetical or in ten years, it's immediate! “
(Working group participant)
Overarching Principles to Sustain Youth Engagement
There are three overarching principles that will assist in encouraging youth to show up to a prevention effort:
- Carve out and support roles of young people within initiatives.
- Circle back to young people around the contributions they make and to the community around the impact they have.
- Be curious and flexible around how young people can take part and contribute.
Jump to other Key Sections of Youth Shift
More on Sustainers and strategies for increasing youth impact in a project can be found in the Youth Shift download!
Download the Full Youth Shift Framework and Guide