"It's not just about the task. It's about the power."

James Wagoner, President, Advocates for Youth

Chances are, if you've worked in the prevention field long enough, you've been part of a project that involved youth. You may have had young people create prevention posters or facilitate peer education classes on the dangers of alcohol and other drug use. Some of the ways you've tried may have worked better than others. Perhaps you want to try some new ideas. Today we will identify specific ways to involve youth in your prevention program, and explore how to make these experiences more meaningful and successful.

Connecting Activities to Goals and Strategies

There are many ways to involve youth in prevention programming, but they may not all be right for your organization. Before arbitrarily bringing youth on board, think about why you are doing so and how youth involvement will further your programmatic and/or organizational goals. Then, let these goals dictate the specific ways you engage youth. For example:

• If your project is dedicated to improving youth leadership skills, then consider providing youth with opportunities to make decisions and to assume responsibilities for certain aspects of planning and implementation.
• If your project will be developing messages that target youth, consider involving youth in the process of creating and testing the messages and the materials that convey them.
• If a goal is to have your organization become more responsive to youth's needs, then consider involving youth in the development and administration of a needs assessment survey and in the interpretation of the data they collect.

Another way to think about youth involvement is in terms of the prevention strategies you will be using. Consider the five environmental prevention strategies: policy, enforcement, communications, collaboration, and education. Below are some interesting examples of how you might involve youth in each:

• Policy. Consider having youth design and conduct surveys; speak at events, such as conferences, public hearings, or advocacy meetings; write letters to newspapers, policymakers, or manufacturers; or write and circulate a petition. It is also important to include youth in helping to define the problem. For example, the Youth Empowerment and Policy Project (YEP), comprising students from and around the state of Maine, operates on the premise that because underage drinking is a problem affecting the youth population, the most effective way to analyze and improve the multiple environmental factors that encourage, enable, or support underage drinking is to directly involve youth in the discussion. With funding from Maine's State Office of Substance Abuse, YEP members have been trained in public speaking, facilitation, and policy issues; they have drafted a set of recommendations about drug and alcohol policy and are working with communities to implement some of their recommendations.

• Enforcement. Consider employing youth to educate peers, parents, and/or retailers about the laws and policies related to selling alcohol and tobacco and serving alcohol to minors. For example, as part of the Sticker Shock Campaign, youth place stickers warning about the penalties for furnishing alcohol to minors on multi-packs of beer, wine coolers, and other products that might appeal to underage drinkers. The impact of the stickers is increased by media coverage of the event. You could also have youth plan and carry out sting operations or compliance checks at stores that sell alcohol or tobacco products.

• Communications. Consider engaging youth to create and disseminate informational or marketing materials, such as fact sheets, articles, flyers, posters, audio- or videotapes, or public service announcements. Have them represent your program at conferences or on radio or television programs. Invite them to assist in the planning and implementation of your campaign. For example, one of the main goals of Pennsylvania's youth-led advocacy group BUSTED! is to develop counter-marketing strategies against the targeting of teens by tobacco companies. BUSTED! teens make presentations, develop campaign logos and materials (including the BUSTED! magazine), and work closely with the media to communicate their messages.

• Collaboration. Youth can play a key role in helping you connect to other groups and build coalitions. They can help you recruit coalition members, plan and implement coalition projects, and keep coalition members up to date on what's going on. At the minority-based organization ROCA, Inc. (Reaching Out to Chelsea Adolescents), youth and adults co-lead the center's Coalition for Children and Families. Working together, they have successfully recruited program staff and community members to become involved in a variety of prevention initiatives and community-building activities.

• Education. Yes, youth make great peer leaders! But also consider involving them in other ways, such as developing curricula or making presentations to parents or merchants. For example, STATIC (Students Teaching Against Tobacco in Connecticut) is a youth leadership and peer education program designed to educate and empower youth to work against the manipulation and targeting of the tobacco industry. Youth members of STATIC provide workshops and training sessions to other youth and community members.

Finding interesting ways to involve youth can be exciting and fun—it just takes some creativity and a willingness to think outside the box. Keep in mind that the more options for involvement you create, the more (and the more diverse) youth you will attract, and the stronger your program and organization will become.

"Meaningful" Revisited

Many factors determine whether youth involvement is successful. Foremost among these is whether the work is meaningful. Do the youth themselves find value in what they are doing? Is it valuable for others? Meaningful activities are those that help youth develop the skills and attributes they need to be contributing members of a community. When experiences are meaningful, youth—-like adults—are more likely to continue doing them.

To determine whether an activity is meaningful, ask yourself the following:

• Does it help youth develop life and leadership skills?
• Does it help youth gain self-confidence?
• Does it provide opportunities for youth to contribute to the community? To speak out and take action on issues they care about? To take on leadership roles and make significant decisions?
• Does it provide new and interesting experiences that will help youth succeed down the road (e.g., make it easier to find and maintain a job, to choose a career)?
• Are the youth involved in developing new and/or closer relationships with peers and adults?
• Are the messages put out by your program clear and youth-friendly? Are they being accepted by youth?
• Is your program achieving good prevention outcomes?

Another way to assess the meaningfulness of your activities is in terms of goals and benefits. Review the benefits of youth participation described on Day 1. Then ask yourself, "Will the activities I've put in place really help me achieve these benefits?" Many activities may sound good but won't really get you where you want to go.

Levels of Responsibility
Youth involvement can also be made more meaningful by engaging youth in different levels of responsibility and decision-making. Levels can range from having no responsibility or decision-making power (i.e., youth are told by adults what to do) to youth running a group or organization with little or no guidance from adults. As youth's responsibility increases and they participate more fully in decision-making and program planning and implementation, their work generally becomes more meaningful to them and has a greater impact on the prevention program and the organization.

The Youth Council of Northern Ireland presents a useful model for understanding youth involvement:

Levels of Responsibility Model

This model describes participation as a six-level continuum reflecting increasing amounts of youth responsibility and involvement in decision-making. The levels are as follows:

• None: Adults have unchallenged and complete authority. Youth are not involved in making decisions.
• Tokenism: Adults set the agenda and make the decisions. One or two young people may be brought in to contribute ideas, but their input is not necessarily used.
• Consultation: Adults consult a number of young people, for example, through focus groups. However, adults still make all of the decisions.
• Representation: A small group of young people are selected to represent their peers, usually via a committee system or advisory board. The extent to which the young people are involved in the decision-making varies depending on the organization.
• Participation: Youth set the agenda, decide on issues and activities, and have joint accountability with adults. They are involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating projects and programs.
• Self-Managing: Young people manage their work with little or no guidance from adults.

The Levels of Responsibility model can help you assess the quality of the youth involvement activities you currently have underway. It can also help you think through ways to make these activities more meaningful. For example, suppose your program wants to involve youth in making prevention posters. The model can help you conceptualize this activity at a variety of levels:

Here's another example: Suppose you want to involve youth in conducting a sting operation (programs in which youth, or young-looking adults, attempt to buy cigarettes or alcohol without showing identification to store owners). The model can help you expand your view of the possible roles that youth might assume:

Some of you may not feel ready, at this point, to involve youth at some of the levels described above. You may not have staff available to supervise ongoing involvement by youth, or the time or money to provide necessary training. Youth involvement might even be outside the scope of your current contract. Nonetheless, it is valuable to see the range of options and think about how you might move along the continuum over time. For example, if you are already involving youth as consultants, what would it take—in terms of funding, staffing, training, space—to move to the next level and create a youth advisory board that could provide your program with regular input? Or, perhaps there is a discrete piece of your program in which youth could take on more responsibility. In many settings, young people participate at several different levels, depending on the readiness of the individuals, the program goals, and organizational capacity. Keep in mind that some activities lend themselves more easily to immediate youth involvement, while others may require more training and preparation.

Figuring out what youth involvement might look like for your program or organization is a critical first step. But figuring out how to make involvement work is equally important. Successful youth involvement doesn't just happen. Over the next two days, we will look at key factors that affect youth involvement and explore strategies for improving the quality of your youth involvement efforts.

Please proceed to Activity 2:
Involving Youth in Meaningful Ways.

References

California Center for Civic Participation and Youth Development. (2004). Types of Youth Engagement Activities. Youth Voices in Community Design. Retrieved Jan 7, 2007, from http://www.californiacenter.org/pdf/Online_Curriculum/R4.pdf

CSAP's Northeast Center for Prevention Technologies. (2001). Prevention: What's Science Got to Do with It? Newton, MA: Education Development Center. Retrieved July 15, 2004, from http://captus.samhsa.gov/northeast/resources/prevention_materials/whats_science.cfm

The Medical Foundation. (2003). Building Exemplary Systems for Training (BEST Initiative). Boston, MA: Author.

Peer Leadership Preventing Tobacco. (1997). Boston, MA: The Medical Foundation.

Personal communication with Kitty Bauman, director of Revere CARES, Revere, Mass., September 28, 2004.

Personal communication with Becky Hoffmann, program director, Makin' It Happen, September 15, 2004.

Promoting Positive Attitudes for Youth: Makin' It Happen. (2005). About Makin' It Happen. Manchester, NH: Author. Retrieved February 3, 2005, from www.makinithappen.org

Youth Council of Northern Ireland. (1996). What Is Participation? In Advancing Youth Development: A Curriculum for Training Youth Workers. Washington DC: Academy for Educational Development/Center for Youth Development and Policy Research.

Youth to Youth International. (n.d.). Effective Research-Based Prevention Programming for Teens: The Essence of Youth to Youth. Columbus, OH: Author. Retrieved July 21, 2004, from www.youthtoyouth.net/about/dl/Essence%20of%20Youth%20to%20Youth.pdf