Youth-Led Community Building: Promising Practices From Two Communities Using Community-Based Service-Learning

Little research exists about how youth voice and engagement in community building can be successfully implemented. This article discusses promising practices from an evaluation study of community-based service-learning, sponsored by 4-H/Youth Development. The practices are those that the programs used to promote youth and engagement and voice while also providing service in the form of community building to the communities. The data indicate that youth can lead community building. Implications for Extension include offering guidance on youth-led, asset-based community building, offering an additional model of service-learning, and offering a broad framework for documentation and evaluation to help explain such work. [author]