Bringing you long-term solutions through inclusive planning and youth engagement.
   
 
  Creating Comprehensive and Inclusive Plans  
 

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“The gaping hole in many of today's youth is a sense of place in the community and a stake in that community. The absence of such bonding strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a person, which is, in part, being beholden to others. It also strikes at the very heart of our political structure, for if teens do not view themselves as being subscribers to the social contract, they will see no sense in following it."

-American Youth

Policy Forum

    
Introduction
Onsite-Insights (O/I) provides a variety of expertise and services that will ensure that a city can cost effectively create a Children, Youth and Family Master Plan (CY&FMP) or an Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Plan (AYCEP). Our staff have a vast array of experience in youth master planning, youth development, citizen and youth engagement and in merging this experience with the resources and talents of the youth and adults living and working in your city, town or county. We not only bring the experience you need to guide you through a comprehensive and inclusive planning process, we also bring an unwavering belief in the power and value of youth as change agents and the understanding that the issues facing young people and families are more about improving systems than they are about changing kids. O/I not only will help your city create a functional planning document, we will also assist you in ensuring you have the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to implement the plan's strategies, and that the planning process will optimize success.
 
Understanding Our Approach to Planning

Creating either of these inclusive and comprehensive plans are strategies an ever-increasing number of cities, towns and counties are beginning to explore in their attempt to more effectively and efficiently address the seemingly overwhelming number of issues that are impacting its' children, youth and families or more specifically its’ youth. Each approach is unique, tested and research based. Each is founded on the principle that citizen engagement enhances the effectiveness and sustainability of any planning and implementation process. Each engages and resources young people in authentic ways and each is tailored to the current realities of the community with which we are working.

Children, Youth and Family Master Plans
When facilitating a community’s CY&FMP, we incorporate a planning model based on the National League of Cities position paper entitled, A City Platform for Strengthening Families and Improving Outcomes for Children and Youth. This platform, while identifying the seven most critical focus areas (Early Children Development, Youth Development, Youth in Transition, Family Economics, Education and After School Programming, Health and Safety and Neighborhoods and Community), also allows for a great deal of adaptation, ensuring current and unforeseen issues in your city will also be addressed. We also believe that for a community to shift how it works with and provides for its children, youth and families it must learn a new youth development language. To assist your community learn this new language we draw heavily and the Developmental Assets (SM) framework developed and championed by Search Institute.

O/I also believes that the effectiveness of a Youth Master Plan is far more dependent on the pre-planning, initiation and implementation phases than on the strategies identified in the document itself. Our efforts go far beyond simply creating a document outlining the status of your community's children, youth and families. We ensure that the process leading up to the plan is comprehensive and inclusive and that the structure needed to ensure long-term viability is in place. Our planning model also puts into place a whole new way of addressing and engaging the youth from your community and creates a process that brings young people and adults together as effective partners and change agents.

All the experience and research from the field of youth development indicates that to effectively address children, youth or family related issues, communities must shift from applying approaches that are reactive and deficit-based to those that are well-planned and strength-based. The following diagram indicates the shifts O/I will facilitate in its pre-planning approach:
 

Deficit-based Approach

Intended to solve problems
Focused on individuals
Focused on problems
Addressing the few in need
Reducing deficits
Fragmented in its approaches
»

Strength-based Approach

Building a community where everyone thrives
Focused on systems
Focused on opportunities
Addressing all citizens
Increasing assets
Collaborative in its approaches
       
To accomplish these shifts O/I focuses on helping a community become developmentally attentive to its children, youth and families. We define a developmentally attentive city as one that uses strength-based approaches to intentionally support the healthy development in all its' children through the first two decades of their lives. We accomplish this by creating a "snapshot" of what the city wants to accomplish. During the initiating phase we attend as much to building partnerships that ensure success as we do to data gathering. O/I creates a process that greatly increases the likelihood that those interested in contributing have the opportunity.

During the initiating phase we assist in the creation of a vision embraced by the many, rather than the few, we help those involved understand the "real" current reality, rather than the "statistics only" reality, we assist in creating a groundswell of support to ensure resources and energy can be placed into the development of a city's children and youth, and we create structures that begin the process of learning to work effectively and efficiently together, especially among the city's youth and adults. We also help those involved develop strategies based more on resourcefulness than on resources.

Our youth development, youth engagement and youth planning lessons were learned from our efforts as the chief architects for Hampton, Virginia’s award winning Youth Master Plan and from over 200 communities who have contracted with us. These lessons include:

  • Successful CY&FM planning occurs only when a community can shift its view of youth and adult citizens from merely recipients of services to resources and partners in the overall well being of the city.
  • Karen Pittman’s basic premise of youth development is that "Problem free is not fully prepared, fully prepared is not fully developed, and fully developed is not fully engaged". O/I believes that a CY&MP must focus as much attention on the development of all children, youth and families as it does on the prevention or remediation of those individuals deemed to be at risk. It also needs to view all interested citizens, especially young people, as important contributors in all aspects of the planning process.
  • A CY&FMP document is only a guideline or road map. Without a communitywide commitment of the resources needed to make the plan work, to the training needed for young people and adults to work more effectively and efficiently together, and an understanding that the process is a journey not a destination, it will prove to be ineffective.
  • The information that is collected and used to create a CY&FMP must focus as much on what's working for children, youth and families in the city community as it does on what needs to be improved. Therefore, data collection must be both an engaging and anecdotal process involving a variety of citizens and a process for obtaining official data points.
  • All citizens, including young people, should be able to have a role in both the planning and implementation phases of the CY&FMP. The more who participate, the more the chances of success. Everyone should be able to support what the plan identifies as important.
  • Those assigned to staff or mange the strategies identified in a CY&FMP must be given the authority needed to implement and should have the knowledge, skills and abilities to oversee such an initiative. These individuals do not all need to be municipal employees, in fact we have found that partnerships with youth-serving organizations are a good way to marry much needed skills and resources.

O/I will assist your community in assessing your community's its current ability to provide the developmentally attentive services, supports and opportunities needed for all children, youth and families to thrive. We also provide the knowledge and skills needed to allow young people to become more able to contribute to their community. We access the talents and energy in a community and help ensure that potentially fragmented approaches can become part of a well-orchestrated plan. And finally, we assist in the creation of strong youth and adult partnerships that allow a city to access the special gifts of both populations and to allow every citizen to play a meaningful role in the future health and welfare of the community.

  
           
       
Our Children, Youth and Family Master Planning Approach
  
       

From experience, O/I believes that it requires at least a year to effectively create and implement a successful CY&FMP. We believe that Youth Master Plans CY&FMPs are only useful if the implementation strategies are well designed and embraced by all the key stakeholders. There must be authentic support from the governing body and its chief administrator and it is also helpful if the governing body and administrators of the public schools are also on board. Facilitating a planning process requires time. To ensure that this planning process is successful, O/I is committed to adhering to the following Planning Process Guidelines:

  • Our number one focus throughout the planning and implementation phases is inclusiveness.
  • We prepare participants with the skills needed to assume the responsibilities given to them.
  • The data used to create the plan is compiled from as many existing and new sources as possible. We want to know how each group of stakeholders responds to the question, "What do we want for our children, youth and families?"
  • We facilitate sharing and learning among all participants.
  • We blend our expertise and connections with the expertise and connections of those working and living within your community.
  • We our committed to leaving your community with a CY&FMP that is inclusive, visionary and realistic, and developmentally attentive.
  
           
       
Authentic Youth Civic Engagement (AYCE) Planning
  
       

An AYCE planning is designed to produce a comprehensive and inclusive plan but more importantly it helps adults and young people understand the importance of having youth:

  • Be viewed as valuable resources to the decision-making regarding all that impacts them;
  • Select opportunities to contribute based on their abilities, time, and passions;
  • Be partnered with adults willing to move away from only problem solving approaches to more proactive approaches that equally explore ways to address the systems that impact them;
  • Have access to the knowledge, skills and experiential opportunities needed to be a leader and a resource; and
  • Have easy access to opportunities that allow them to be contributors and that encourages the community to view those contributions as valuable.

Creating an Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Framework throughout a community is the most effective way to shift from a recipient only mindset to one that views young people as resources. When young people are viewed as resources, the negative climate towards youth changes and, in turn, negative indicators decrease and thriving indicators increase. O/I facilitates the development of this framework within the municipality, schools, neighborhoods and youth-serving organizations of a community. This means that when this planning effort is completed the community will already have many engagement opportunities in place and it will be ready to expand as needed. And it will have identified a process to ensure that an ever-increasing number of engagement opportunities can be created and an ever-increasing number of young people can become engaged.

The following represents the award winning Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Framework created in Hampton, VA. And which is now operating in hundreds of other communities across the country. As the chief architects of this model, O/I staff uses their experience to ensure that a community can quickly and efficiently move to incorporating the framework. While this framework is simple in appearance, when fully incorporated into the fabric of a community, it ensures that every young person has the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to the overall community. And when an ever-creasing number of young people are meaningfully engaged, communities begin to experience reductions in high-risk behaviors and increases in thriving behaviors.

  
       
 
     
Within any civic engagement opportunity, people choose to participate at varying levels, depending on interest, availability, skill, or the ultimate goal of the activity in which the participant is engaged. For young people it is no different; yet, most adults limit their vision of a teenager’s level of interest and their potential to help others or impact the community. Thus, Hampton developed a framework of youth engagement with multiple pathways, represented by three layers of a triangle. The three pathways, beginning with the base, describe an increase in the complexity of the role of the young person as an engaged citizen and a corresponding potential for impact on community change.

Projects, Tasks, and Service
The myriad volunteer activities available to young people to be helpful and serve others constitute the first pathway of our triangle. Most communities have a host of these opportunities, scattered throughout the youth-serving and civic institutions. They are short-term, often “hands on,” activities requiring few specific skills and minimal training.

The Projects Pathway can offer an almost unlimited variety of options for participation with specific issues that offer a positive experience to individuals. Young people participating in projects, tasks, and service can pass out campaign literature, collect canned goods for a food drive, conduct surveys, organize neighborhood clean-ups and recruit their peers to get involved. They are making a difference by giving of their time and talent or providing a needed service to the community.

Input and Consultation
This pathway is an advisory function. Here young people enhance the decision-making and problem solving of adults by adding a “youth voice” into processes usually dominated by an adult perspective. Although adults ultimately maintain the authority to decide, the unique perspective provided by young people impacts those decisions. Advisory opportunities can be short or long-term commitments, generally requiring skills in listening, presentation, and analysis of the issues in question, which may be broad or specific in nature. Where Project Pathway activities often impact an individual who is the recipient of a community service such as tutoring or volunteering in a nursing home, Input Pathway activities usually impact groups or organizations that benefit from the input provided. Youth-serving organizations, schools, neighborhoods and local government may provide opportunity for advisory-based engagement in the form of focus groups, advisory boards, “speakouts,” and opportunities to assist in data analysis and program development.

Shared Leadership
This pathway offers the greatest potential for impact on community change. Here youth work “shoulder to shoulder” with adults, sharing responsibility for activity and outcome. Many take on leadership roles far beyond those normally afforded others of their age, thus changing community norms of who is “at the table.” This type of engagement carries a greater need for skill and commitment, and usually implies a focus on broader areas of impact–policy, strategic planning, systems change. Young people in the Shared Leadership Pathway may work within systems as board members or paid employees, or outside of systems as lobbyists or activists. Wherever they choose to focus their energies, they become part of deliberative processes focused on the decision-making that impacts the lives and well-being of youth and their communities. This planning process serves as an excellent example of this pathway.

Each pathway is an important element in an overall system of youth engagement. Whether the system encompasses an entire community, or is reflected within an organization or a grass roots initiative, the same principles of the triangle apply. The arrow on the right side of the diagram points to an increase in potential opportunities offered and the corresponding number of potential participants. The arrow on the left indicates the increased potential for community change and the corresponding need for higher levels of skill. While the number of individuals tends to decrease with opportunities further up the triangle, the potential for impact increases.

An important lesson emerged from Hampton’s initiative: view the triangle as a hierarchy of opportunity rather than a hierarchy of individuals with corresponding value placed on their level of engagement. For any community to significantly influence the trends away from increased high-risk behaviors to increased thriving behaviors all three pathways of activity must be available, meaningful and successful. Not only does this increase the possibility of attracting the greatest variety and number of youth, it increases the potential for impact on multiple issues of social concern. Most importantly, municipal and community leaders need to shift their beliefs from only wanting to do this because it will be good for the young people, to doing this because it will be good for the community. When something is good for the entire community it will be good for its young people. O/I helps these local leaders make this shift.

Like adults, many young people want to participate only in the Project Pathway. Their desire for meaningful involvement may coincide with limited available time or different interests, yet it still must allow them roles as engaged and competent citizens. A strong foundation of these activities provides the scope of opportunities for youth to test their affinity toward civic involvement; the more opportunities, the more young people can find something of interest to them. This type of engagement is the very core of community-based volunteerism. Once involved, opportunities open up for young people as they are exposed to new information, new skills, and new relationships. As they gain confidence, experience success, and taste the excitement of impacting change, their interest grows in the other pathways. If the scope of opportunities is crafted as a system, the likelihood for movement within and among the pathways increases. Often adults will notice youth volunteers who have passion for an issue and refer them to advisory opportunities. Young people who never considered Board or Youth in Shared Leadership roles are exposed to new volunteer service opportunities.

The result is a rich and diverse pool of youth leaders, passionate about their role in their community. Visitors to Hampton’s youth civic engagement system marvel at the level of the work tackled by young people, but are even more amazed that they do not resemble a stereotype of youth leadership. Because a young person may have started in a neighborhood group and gained skills along the way, he or she may occupy a role that in other communities tends to attract only a few “superstars.” O/I helps a community guard against assumptions that place young people in pre-determined citizenship roles, or practices that limit their access to any level of engagement in which they might be interested. Young people must be exposed to multiple action pathways that provide ongoing options for meaningful participation in organizations and activities that they believe will make a difference to someone.

  
           
       
Our Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Approach
  
     
O/I works with the key youth and adult stakeholders in a community to create a comprehensive and sustainable Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Framework. This framework is based on the award-winning efforts that have flourished in Hampton, VA for the past 18 years. The following five components define the planning and implementation effort. We recommend a time line long enough to allow this process to not only create a plan but to build the relationships between the youth and adults within the community. While ever community is different, it is O/I’s experience that it takes a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 months for the plan to be finalized and the framework to be in place.

Phase I: Learning the community, recruiting youth and adult change agents and creating a core team
During the first two to three months of this planning process O/I staff learn the culture of the community and assess its willingness to embrace an authentic youth civic engagement framework. During this time, focus is paid to identifying those youth and adults who are passionate about making the community more youth friendly, who are able to focus on what’s working and how they can expand on that, and who are open to viewing young people as equally valuable to the long-term health and vitality of the community. Some of these individuals are immediately selected to serve on the core team while others are slated to serve on focus teams that begin their work later. During this period O/I visits organizations, schools, municipal departments and neighborhoods looking for these individuals. Over the life of the planning process about 80-120 individuals need to be recruited. Attempts are made to have equal numbers of youth, young adults and older adults and to ensure that the demographics of this group mirrors the demographics of the community. We also begin to recruit interns from local colleges who are trained to assist the focus team facilitators with research, logistics and other support. During this period we also begin the process of preparing and supporting the local staff/volunteers assigned to this effort.

Phase II: Understanding the framework
While the Authentic Youth Civic Engagement Framework appears to be very simple, it is in fact very complex. It is complex because it requires people, both youth and adults, to change the way they think, believe and behave. Our culture primarily views its young people as recipients of what adults have to provide or teach them. While this is not problematic in and of itself, it does present problems when those adults are unable to transition into also viewing youth for what they have to offer. Therefore, O/I provides a series of training opportunities, beginning with preparing the key youth and adult core team members, staff and interns. This training opportunity includes the Spectrum of Attitudes for adults and the Hampton model of youth civic engagement.

During this phase O/I also spends time identifying the existing youth engagement opportunities within the community and exploring where there exists potential for creating new opportunities. For the Framework to have the scope needed to alter local perceptions and behaviors there needs to be multiple opportunities within the community’s municipal systems, schools, neighborhoods and youth-serving organizations.

Phase III: Organizing around key participant groups
Once enough youth, young adults and older adults have been recruited, teams focused on building authentic youth civic engagement frameworks within municipal government, schools, neighborhoods and youth-serving organizations are formed. A key element to the success of these teams is the identifying and training of local volunteer facilitators. While O/I facilitates the core team meetings, local facilitators are facilitating each of the other four teams. Facilitators can be anyone who is supportive of the planning process, willing to hold the group focused on strength-based and strategic solutions, capable of working well with both young people and adults and able to commit the time it takes. O/I trains each facilitator to run effective groups and support their team’s planning process. Each team has two facilitators assigned to ensure uninterrupted facilitation. The consultant provides each facilitator with National, state and local information that helps the team make decisions.

Phase IV: Initiating youth and adult teams and identifying opportunities for engagement within key participant groups
The four key focus areas are authentic youth civic engagement in government, authentic youth civic engagement in the schools, authentic youth civic engagement in neighborhoods and authentic youth civic engagement in youth-serving organizations. Each team has between 20 and 30 members; each has two local volunteer facilitators trained by the consultant; and each has equal representation of high school age young people, young adults between 20 and 30 years old and older adults. The adults on the teams represent a combination of professionals and lay citizens. Attempts are made to mirror the demographics of the city within each team.

Everyone from the teams, including the core team participates in a kickoff session that provides training, build excitement and focus, and begin the planning process. O/I provides the support needed to ensure the ongoing teamwork is successful. Local staff, along with the recruited interns, provides the staffing needed to make the facilitators’ job as easy as possible.

Each team has the responsibility of designing a youth civic engagement framework for its focus area. Each needs to explore and make recommendations for:

  • Ensuring that the training needed to ensure the success and sustainability for the recommendations in their area of focus is available and of a high quality;
  • Identifying existing youth civic engagement opportunities and determining where new opportunities can be created, ensuring every young person can find a place to contribute;
  • Creating strategies to ensure that an ever-increasing number of all types of young people are made aware of the opportunities that exist and that an effective system of recruitment is established;
  • Identifying those opportunities that can be initiated with the least amount of additional support or resources; and
  • Ensuring that the system’s infrastructures are supporting the successful implementation of a comprehensive and sustainable youth civic engagement framework within each key participant group.

Phase V: Synthesizing team reports into a single document and presenting to city, school, neighborhood and organizational leaders
Upon completion of the team’s work O/I creates a single document that present the process used to reach the final recommendations, the final recommendations within each focus area, strategies for moving to scale and recommendations for ensuring adequate resources and sustainability.