Think Globally, Act Locally: A Global Perspective on Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development

Abstract

We begin our discussion with a brief overview of whom we have in mind when we talk about youth today and, more particularly, youth from a global perspective. We then briefly describe a wide range of programs and projects developed by and/or serving youth around the globe. Some of these projects are designed and funded by adults, whereas others are in the hands of the youth who initiated them, often with the guidance and financial assistance of adults. We will argue that despite these excellent resources youth are still challenged by a range of social, political, and economic problems, many of which continue to marginalize them from opportunities to participate actively in their schools, families, and communities. In hopes of better understanding why, and of improving our responses to these realities, we explore some of the assumptions underlying psychological theories of human development that inform many of these existing youth programs. We discuss problems attendant to the application of these theories to practice and, more specifically, to policy; for example, to international conventions that bear on the rights and responsibilities of adults vis-‡-vis youth, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). We briefly discuss the opportunities these challenges afford us, as social scientists and educators, to rethink selected dominant theories about youth. Drawing on this developing knowledge, we then look to youth worldwide to inform our thinking about how to mobilize other adults for positive youth development. We explore youth activism and organizing using two youth-driven and -directed activities and participatory action research, a dialectically grounded, action-based system of knowledge construction and social change, as resources that challenge conventional wisdom about how youth gather their own stories and "speak truth to power." We suggest a more critical analysis of youth empowerment as we urge a position of solidarity with youth rather than one of empowerment of youth. We conclude with several suggestions for future action and research with youth wherein and through which we, as adults, "think globally and act locally" with youth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)