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N a t i o n a l C i v i c Review DOI: 10.1002/ncr.21234 Fall 2015
B Y S H E L LY H E L G E S O N
and DYLAN SCHNEIDER
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based on research, personal experiences, and collaboration. The Juvenile Justice Advocate program,
like many other TNOYS initiatives, demonstrates
first hand that systemic change comes from dedicated, constructive, community engagement.
Fall 2015
Recommendations
By analyzing these organizations, we found that
genuine youth engagement was at the core of
their organizational success. Within each program,
youth were treated as authentic stakeholders. We
believe that if youth engagement is at the center
of community-based organizational initiatives, it
is not limited to the field of violence prevention
but has the potential to operate as a lever for positive social change on a larger scale. The following
value-based recommendations are gleaned from
these violence prevention organizations but are
intended for a broader audience of communitybased organizations.
We arrived at these recommendations by conducting research and personal interviews with leadership and program staff at the four organizations
analyzed. We then examined each organization
through a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to identify shared best
practices of creating opportunities for meaningful
youth engagement. The well-developed public values framework presented by Mark Moore in his
book Recognizing Public Value (2013) further enabled us to hone in on the core values underlying
each recommendation. These core values include
meaningful youth leadership, accessibility, collaboration, and active listening. Thus, we propose the
following core value-based recommendations that
can easily be integrated into the existing programs
of other socially conscious organizations seeking to empower youth as authentic community
stakeholders.
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Our recommendation that embodies the corevalue of collaboration for community-based youth
engagement is simple: partner dont compete. This
key organizational practice was found across all
organizations as the cornerstone for determining
success in youth engagement programs. Organizations that actively pursued partnerships within the
public, private, and nonprofit sectors were able
to run more effective programming when their
resources were put toward creating productive
partnerships instead of competing with like-minded
groups for similar programming targets.
Three of the organizations, B.A.M, Omega Boys
Club, and SAVE, chose to partner with local school
districts to offer violence prevention programming
within the public school systems. Although they are
not official employees of the state, program staff
work inside the schools and alongside school administrators and faculty to address truancy and behavioral issues in youth from several fronts. B.A.M
counselors work closely with teachers to understand
the problems their young men are presenting in the
classroom. The counselor then works on those issues
in group counseling circles, asking the youth why
they are performing the negative action and identifying methods to resolve it. Counselors then reconvene
with the teachers to ensure that the new behavior is
being modeled in the classroom. This cooperative
work structure requires many hours of relationship
building by the organizations program staff, as the
often overworked inner-city school employees will
not allocate time to work with optional service providers if a strong sense of trust is not established.
These strategic partnerships within the school systems increase the overall success of programs, while
simultaneously contributing to diminishing violent
behavior occurring in schools.
B.A.M. and TNOYS have modeled our recommendation of partner dont compete beyond just the
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its evaluation period. Open dialogue that encourages a stream of feedback, not just at the end of a
program but in real-time, is essential to youth taking ownership in organizational success. Knowing
their opinions are valued at the beginning will build
trust with the program staff acting as evaluators
and make youth more apt to play an active role in
formal evaluation systems at the end of a program
term. Evaluators must always be mindful to listen
to qualitative data from youth participants, just as
much as they adhere to the successes quantitative
data confirms. Doing so will ensure that authentic
youth perspectives are acknowledged throughout
the lifespan of the program and are given equal
ownership in the programs meant to serve them.
Conclusion
It is clear from the current political and social landscape that youth today crave recognition as equal
contributors in shaping a just society. Yet, youth
cannot have an authentic role in creating safe and
healthy communities, until they are recognized as an
integral component of the solution. This shift must
occur from the bottom-up. From our analysis of the
four pioneering violence prevention organizations,
we learned that community-based organizations are
essential in facilitating a culture that deeply transforms youth and their communities. Our belief is
that if the core values that are at the foundation of
our recommendations are shared and adopted by
other communities, a new generation of leaders will
emerge to influence systemic structures for positive
change.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge our fellow University of San
Francisco colleagues who contributed to the original research on the project from which this article
was born. They include Kaitlyn Azevedo, Fernando
Enciso-Marquez, and Kevin Mosca. We also thank
Richard Callahan, Chair of the Department of
Public and Nonprofit Administration at the University of San Francisco, for his invaluable advice
Fall 2015
References
Francisco.
Alive & Free. 2014: Our Road to Success. San Francisco, CA.
2015, p. 3. Retrieved from http://stayaliveandfree.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/Alive-Free-Annual-Report-20151.pdf
Clinton, J. 2014. The True Impact of Evaluation. American
Journal of Evaluation, 35(1), 120127.
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Taut, S. M. and Alkin, M. C. 2003. Program Staff Perceptions of Barriers to Evaluation Implementation. American
Journal of Evaluation, 24(2), 213226.
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