Youth-Adult Partnerships in Public Action: Principles, Organizational Culture, and Outcomes

The findings and the case studies described in this report underscore the critical role that community-based organizations can play both in developing young people's leadership abilities and driving positive community change. Specifically, the authors push beyond principles, identifying effective organizational and management practices that can help any organization committed to meaningful youth engagement advance their efforts in concrete ways. Additionally, the outcomes they identify present a useful impact framework for much-needed future program evaluation and research efforts. Documenting the outcomes that organizations like those featured in this report can achieve - with the young people who participate and the adults, institutions and communities they work with - is critical to ensuring further investment and innovation. Young people are disproportionately involved in and affected by the problems that beset communities and states. Far too many young people are not doing well because communities are not doing well by them. This is cause for concern - and for engagement. Young people are not only at the center of many problems, they are the source of many solutions. Without direct youth and family input into community and state efforts to improve youth services and policies, efforts can miss the mark. This is why youth and family engagement is a core strategy in the Forum's Ready by 21® approach, now being used in communities and states across the country to drive long-term change.