The Social Justice Youth Development Approach

As someone who aligned with this ideology last week I was excited to continue to read about Social Justice YDEV (SJYD). I try to keep this ideology in mind in any space where I'm working with youth and when I'm in a space where we're talking about youth. The latter seems to happen a lot in schools and organizations where we're talking about youth but not keeping the social, economic and political forces impacting our youth in mind. I've been in conversation about discipline, lack of involvement and mental health with adults who are blaming or assuming and thinking, often saying, have we asked youth? 

The quote from this article that really resonated with me was when they talk about the difference between service learning and social awareness:

"a service learning approach might encourage youth to participate in a service activity that provides homeless families with food, while social awareness encourages youth to examine and influence political and economic decisions that make homelessness possible in the first place"

I think we see this a lot in schools and community organizations. We're providing positive supports, for example we're giving out resources on mental health and providing safe spaces to youth who might also be giving these resources to their community. But that's not SJYD. I imagine that would look more like youth reflecting on their mental health as it relates to their race, gender, economic status, etc. and understanding the roots of mental health as it relates to these identities. Building into what resources are, or are not there (this does play into the more service learning side but I think with it being supported by other aspects this is still acceptable), in their own communities and what the community needs and advocating for the political leaders in their community to address the institutional factors that are impacting the mental health of their community. 

I really liked the table on Critical Consciousness and Youth Outcomes for Social Justice as well and will definitely use this model, and article to continue to reflect on the youth spaces I'm a part of and develop.

My artifact: There were so many things I thought of as artifacts in my work that relate to my work in the SJYD realm. One that I have documented through some photos and videos was a youth let BLM walk that happened in Woonsocket last June. A group of middle and high school youth wanted to lead a walk in their own town that started in the middle of town down to the police station to demand justice then back up the the center of town where youth spoke, sang, and rapped. They coordinated from start to finish the entire walk and all they asked of us as adults was to be there for support incase anything escalated, luckily nothing did. It was a really fantastic day and I'm excited to share some media from it in class.

Social Justice YDEV Orgs

 

After doing my Ideology Inventory and using the Ideology Horoscope I identify with the social justice youth development ideology. The organizations I looked at were the Providence Student Union, Youth in Action and Providence Youth Student Movement.

A quote and some words I pulled from the Providence Student Union website are "Providence Student Union cultivates students to become powerful advocates for their own education and well-being. PSU unites youth from across Providence to take the lead in reshaping their schools and communities right now."  they use works like cultivate, unite, and "today's leaders" when talking about youth. I think this type of language really speaks to their ideas about working with young people through a social justice lense. I really like that they refer to youth as today's leaders vs. future leaders to empower them as current change agents and leaders in the work.

I've always admired and enjoyed learning about the work Youth in Action does with youth. I think they're a great example of leading with youth and social justice YDEV. I do however think their website doesn't represent that as well as seeing them in action does. A lot of their sentences start with "we create" and it doesn't feel like a youth centered website but more geared towards funders. While I know that the "we" probably does include youth and they have great intentions I think it could be more carefully outlined.

Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) was a newer org for me to explore. I've heard their name come up in a few spaces I've been in but I didn't know a lot about them until exploring their site. I think their homepage being more blog style with updated posts/events is something I haven't seen from an organization before which is cool. I like that their values are categorized under peace, love, and power. I feel a strong sense of community when I read their mission and vision. 

The Caucacity

While I don't directly work for our local high school that our non-profit is located in I do work predominantly in the school itself. I try to integrate myself as a staff member as much as possible to gain respect from teachers and administrators but I find that for the sake of my relationship with youth I also need to distance myself from the school as much as possible.

I first read the text by Tema Okun earlier this year when it was given as pre-reading for a professional development I was attending. We're usually taught (or at least I was) that White Supremacy is things like segregation and slavery, things that are "in the past" because we talk about them in history class and not about how they are still present today. I honestly don't even think I ever had a teacher call it White Supremacy until college. "It was just this one group, the KKK, that were 'really mean' to other people." *please note this is not a direct quote from anyone who taught me about racism but what I re-imagine it was like*

I didn't learn about systemic racism, redlining, stop and frisk, police brutality, the list goes on, until college where I was immersed in learning from diverse educators and diverse peers. It was then that I realized "oh shit I have a lot of unlearning to do". I think about how in my middle and high school years I blended into the sea of my other white peers and how we never had to think about White Supremacy because it benefitted us and if I hadn't taken the time during undergrad to present day to re-educate myself how hurtful I could have been to the youth that I work with. 

I don't think a lot of people that work with youth (youth workers, teachers, whoever), especially in the community I work in, have done this unlearning and re-educating. Maybe they've just started this journey, maybe they don't know where to start, or maybe they're ignorant to White Supremacy or just don't care. Whatever the case may be I'm almost positive even if they have looked into some factors of White Supremacy they certainly have not looked at it through the lense that Tema Okun describes. 

I wonder what it would be like to use this text as a tool for observation not only in our organizations as it pertains to staff members but also in our spaces with youth.