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“We change the way foundations, youth organizations, and community groups do business. We don’t come in with preset ideas or programs. We nurture small organizations and bring innovative practices to funders and academics. It creates a powerful ripple effect.” — Wendy Wheeler, President, Innovation Center |
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   In Waupaca, Wisconsin, a group of young people and adults called Healthy Communities Healthy Youth...  |
The Innovation Center helps communities engage youth, adults, and organizations to contribute to community development initiatives. We support and guide communities as they examine their history and resources, create a community vision and plan, and implement and sustain projects. Our approach is rooted in social justice; we recognize that youth development can play an important role in effecting deep community change. With our partners, we create practical resources and offer training to share new models of youth development. ResourcesLink to tools and resources below to explore youth development. Tools for Implementation
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© 2007 Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development |
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In Waupaca, Wisconsin, a group of young people and adults called Healthy Communities Healthy Youth contacted Connie Abert, University of Wisconsin Extension Youth Development Educator, to discuss ways they could make Waupaca a better place for young people. Abert got the Innovation Center involved.
“This group had already begun to realize the importance of youth adult partnerships,” says Abert, who had just learned that the Innovation Center was creating a tool kit for strengthening communities through youth engagement and youth adult partnerships. “I saw nothing but advantages to using the Innovation Center Building Communities model.”
During a mapping activity to discover assets in community spaces, young people voiced a desire to build a skateboard park. Empowered by their partnerships with and support from adults, the youth found a location for it, raised money, and convinced the city to cover the remaining cost to build it. The result is a safe place for local kids to skateboard. The shared commitment of the Innovation Center and Healthy Communities Healthy Youth to involve young people at every level of decision making and action also led to a resource fair, which connected community organizations with sixth graders to offer kids meaningful volunteer opportunities. Healthy Communities Healthy Youth later formed a youth-led philanthropy committee. With money from the Kellogg Foundation, youth offered local organizations grants in exchange for service projects that involved youth as partners. The group even changed city council so that youth now serve as voting members.
Abert is most excited about an upcoming project that dovetails a Wisconsin requirement that every township develop a land use plan by 2010. “We’ve developed a class in land-use planning for high school students based on activities from the Innovation Center’s Building Community Tool Kit,” says Abert. “These youth will have a voice in what their communities will look like: what’s built where, commercial vs. agricultural development, places for families, places for parks.”
The partnership and generous involvement of Healthy Communities Healthy Youth and many others contributed to several widely used Innovation Center publications: Building Communities: A Tool Kit for Youth and Adults, Youth-Adult Partnerships: A Training Manual; Learning and Leading: A Tool Kit for Youth Development and Civic Activism; and Service-Learning for Community Change: Tools for Youth and Adults to Mobilize Community Change through Service Learning.
PROJECTS
The International Youth Development Exchange (IYDE) provides training and organizational management for youth and adult professional youth development workers all over the world. Through IYDE, the Innovation Center has brought together youth and adult leaders from Egypt, Palestine, India, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and communities across the United States, including New York, NY, Washington, DC, Chelsea, MA, Tucson, AZ, the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Omaha Nation, and the Hopi Nation. This group of highly skilled international youth workers and trainers is improving youth development practices and capacity throughout U.S. cities, Native American communities, and in India, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, and Palestinian territories. International exchanges are coordinated year-round to bring more trainers, new energy, and fresh perspectives to the work of youth and community development.
Youth Leadership for Development Initiative (YLDI). In 1999, the Ford Foundation and the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development set out to explore how young people benefit from involvement in civic activism and to discover new strategies and practices that youth development organizations can learn from the field of youth activism.
The Ford Foundation funded 12 United States community organizations to be part of a three-year learning collaborative. The Innovation Center managed the initiative, selected sites with the Ford Foundation, offered technical assistance, and convened learning events with grantees. Four international fellows from Kenya and South Africa also brought perspectives on youth development and activism from their countries and took new ideas and practices with them when they returned home.
A multi-year evaluation conducted by Social Policy Research Associates (SPR), documented the powerful impact of these organizations on the young people that participated and identified several practices that youth development organizations can learn from civic activism organizations.
At the Table/www.atthetable.org This interactive web site allows practitioners to share resources, strategies, and success stories about involving youth in the decision-making process. The site features books, videos, curricula, workshops, events calendars, discussion boards, and online resources created and offered by outstanding youth development partners. At the Table facilitates a coordinated, sustainable national youth participation movement, fueled by a network of community organizations that rely on one another to find and share strategies, form unique alliances, and make important and lasting connections.