After winning a class-action lawsuit against unconstitutional prison conditions in Puerto Rico, Marco Abarca managed to direct part of the fine monies accumulated throughout years of litigation toward an investment that would improve the living conditions in one of the largest and poorest housing projects in Puerto Rico. With the participation of…

This article is a review on billboard liberation and some other projects that develop the idea of talking back or over advertising in a playful and youthful way. In one of them, Ji Lee's Bubble Project, an artist places blank thought-bubble stickers on street advertisements and waits to see what people write on them, completing the work of art and…

Following the lineage of Taller Alacran, the workshop of Puerto Rican maestro Antonio Martorell, the author explores the studio workshop model as an alternative or a supplement to public school arts education models. Arguing that the production of art is a means of making one's ideas or one's community visible and that the inability, whether…

The social power of music can effect stable and positive changes in individual health and communities that have significant health risks. Two observers, a medical student and a music student, discuss respectively the ideals and challenges of this principle put into practice. Their reflections about the role of music as social therapy and space for…

In the 1960s, Augusto Boal created a process whereby audience members could stop a performance and suggest different actions for the actors, who would then carry out the audience's suggestions. Then, he began inviting audience members onto the stage to demonstrate their ideas and discovered that through their participation they become empowered…

Democratic partnerships of universities, schools, and an array of neighborhood and community organizations are the most promising means of improving the lives of our nation's young people. Over the past two decades, many colleges and universities have been experiencing a renaissance in engagement activities. Universities, once ivory towers, have…

Universities, because of their vast human and fiscal resources, can play the central role in assisting in the development of school-centered community development programs that make youth development their top priority. The Futures Academy, a K-8 public school in the Fruit Belt, an inner-city neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, offers a useful…

After five years with no public schools in their community, residents and neighborhood organizations of the Near Westside of Indianapolis advocated for the opening of George Washington Community High School (GWCHS). As a neighborhood in close proximity to the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the Near Westside and campus…

The Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI) presents a fruitful partnership between faculty and students at a premier research university and members of the surrounding community aimed at addressing the problem of childhood obesity. AUNI uses a problem-solving approach to learning by focusing course activities, including service-learning, on…

When Dayton Public Schools committed to return to neighborhood K-8 schools, the community organized to refocus many youth programs in schools and neighborhoods. This article describes the planning and implementation of Dayton's Neighborhood School Centers. Special emphasis is placed on the role of the University of Dayton, especially the Fitz…

Efforts by metropolitan universities to engage in meaningful and democratic partnerships with community organizations require much time, effort, and considerable resources from the university and its various constituents. Widener University is located in a distressed urban environment. This study, presented from the perspective of the university's…

This article begins by examining current crises facing historically marginalized youth, which necessitate more critical approaches to youth development and empirical investigations into the challenges that young people face. This requires not only listening to their voices, but actively engaging them in investigations of and interventions into…

This participatory action research project worked with four street-life-oriented black men to document how a community sample of street-life-oriented black adolescents between the ages of sixteen and nineteen frame street life as a site of resiliency inside schools based on 156 surveys, 10 individual interviews, and 1 group interview. Data…

The article reports on Latina/o high school students who conducted participatory action research (PAR) on problems that circumscribe their possibilities for self-determination. The intention is to legitimize student knowledge to develop effective educational policies and practices for young Latinas/os. PAR is engaged through the Social Justice…

Zero-tolerance discipline policies, harsh sentencing laws, and the gentrification of communities of color have devastating effects for the lives of young people. Coupled with the fact that urban schools can devalue their views, values, and understandings of the world, this article examines an effort to challenge deficit theories that permeate…