Youth Development in Community Settings: Challenges to Our Field and Our Approach

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to present the community action framework for youth development shown in Figure 11; and second to provide examples of the framework’s application to planning, managing, evaluating and funding community-based youth initiatives. The early sections of the paper discuss why such a framework is needed to mobilize and guide community action on behalf of youth. We then unpack the framework’s elements, place them in historical context, and locate them in existing youth development frameworks. The final sections present examples from our own work of the framework’s application to various community-based youth development initiatives. We then conclude with some specific suggestions for building the field’s capacity to use such a framework to guide current and future communitybased, youth development initiatives.