The benefits of youth voice and meaningful and informed youth participation in social and systemic change initiatives are well-documented (Gonzalez et al., 2020; Gonzalez & Kokozos, 2019; Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007), and storytelling has shown promise as an effective pedagogical tool for nurturing and amplifying youth voices. Inspired by…

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is traditionally valued for its developmental benefits for youth, such as enhancing leadership and critical thinking skills. However, this brief evidences that YPAR's potential extends significantly beyond individual growth, serving as a powerful mechanism for organizational development and academic…

The place of out-of-school time programming in supporting young people's learning and growth is well established. Yet little is known about the staff and volunteers who support young people in school- and community-based afterschool programs, summer camps, national and local youth-serving organizations, and more. The Youth Fields Workforce Study…

Solid and resilient democracies rest upon an informed citizenry capable of critiquing societal issues and reimagining alternative scenarios. Traditional school-based civic and social justice education, however, often falls short of addressing the diverse needs of today's youth, often relying on instructionist pedagogies focused on factual…

This article explores community-based rock music education as a site for strengthening social cohesion in a context of postwar, interethnic divisions. Focusing on small and incremental changes, it examines the practices of Music Connects, a project in the Western Balkans, and its goals of revitalizing rock culture in support of a more inclusive…

Youth fields professionals create the conditions in which young people can thrive: They activate the vision for high-quality programs; develop tools, systems, and approaches for designing and sustaining such programs; and form relationships with and among participating youth. However while investments in afterschool programming have continued to…

A strong link currently exists between entrepreneurship and use of technology and the Internet, primarily because young people increasingly use digital and online strategies to start and develop entrepreneurial initiatives. The goal of this document analysis is to propose a reference framework for digital rights in youth entrepreneurship based on…

Engaging Youth for Positive Change is a local civic engagement program focused on youth and young adults in the U.S. state of Illinois, and guides them through the process of adopting a local ordinance by working with their local city councils or other governing bodies. Researchers collected two waves of data from EYPC participants to…

Young people's unemployment and social exclusion -- the so-called 'youth problem' -- is one of the main focuses in Finnish youth policies. We examine youth policies and youth support systems by applying a framework of policy analysis developed by Carol Bacchi. We ask (1) what kind of problematisations in youth policies and their implementations…

In 2019, Hjørring Municipality launched a comprehensive Youth Guarantee programme to ensure 'positive destinations' for the municipality's youth. The strategy was explicitly inspired by Edinburgh's interpretation of the Scottish Youth Guarantee. In this article, we conceptualize the Youth Guarantee as a policy instrument and unpack the transfer,…

As the infrastructure of police surveillance grows in public schools, communities must be prepared to safeguard the rights and freedoms of students and families. This report is designed to help youth justice advocates, youth leaders, educators, caregivers, and policymakers understand and challenge the impact of school surveillance, data…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamic relationship between unemployment and higher education participation. By using panel data covering 40 sub-Saharan African countries from 2000 to 2020, we opt to use a well-developed dynamic panel generalized method of moments estimator. The findings show that the youth unemployment rate has…

For over 100 years, youth mentoring has grown to be an evidenced based prevention strategy for youth, demonstrating positive youth outcomes through strong relationships with caring adults. While trusting relationships are the mainstay of the positive impacts achieved through mentoring, the difficulty in recruiting volunteer adults has not met the…

This study aims to show how digital youth leadership and activism on climate change has developed, what type of online discourse the movement has managed to channel in the fight against climate change and, above all, why the recently emerged #FridaysForFuture movement has succeeded, and not the classic adult environmental movement. The goals of…

This brief examines the challenges youth face in the current job market and proposes recommendations for a national subsidized employment program that prioritizes equity and amplifies youth voices. The insights provided in this brief are informed by several listening sessions with members of the Communities Collaborating to Reconnect Youth Network…