Community Youth Development: Programs, Policies, and Practices

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 15 No. 2 (2005) ISSN: 1546-2250 Community Youth Development: Programs, Policies, and Practices Villarruel, Francisco A. and Perkins, Daniel F. and Borden, Lynne M. (2003). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 445 pages. $38.95. ISBN 0761927875. Hurricane Katrina recently opened the eyes of Americans to the fragile natural and human ecological systems stressed beyond their capabilities to support poor neighborhoods in New Orleans. The plight of vulnerable populations has been revealed before, but Hurricane Katrina shocked and outraged many Americans as television images told stories about the conditions and consequences of deep poverty, even before the floods: poor housing conditions, lack of access to transportation, inadequate education leading to low wages, dispersed social networks. This natural disaster revealed an underclass living in third world poverty inside a developed country. There are hundreds of communities like this throughout the United States, in urban areas and hidden in rural hollows. How can we act on the national impatience with these inequities? 448 Community youth development is one response. While it is needed everywhere, the greatest need and challenge are in impoverished communities, which are disproportionately populated by people of color. One of the strengths of this book is its close attention to the issues particular to minority youth. A Google search for “community youth development” surfaced 58,900 links to various networks, training programs, publications, agencies, resources, and initiatives that include all three terms.1 Current federal and state initiatives for youth call for creating programs that encourage healthy youth development through agency collaborations within the community. The 2003 book Community Youth Development is a good starting point for practitioners beginning to work in this emerging and still confusing field. The editors define community youth development by adding the aspect of making communities better places for youth to a standard definition of youth development: Community youth development means providing youth with the opportunities to acquire a broad range of competencies and a full complement of positive connections to self, others, and the larger community…. Moreover, creating communities that promote community youth development means engaging youth as partners in the process of positive youth development, that is, providing young people with sustained positive relationships with adults, and opportunities for new skill development and mastery (p. 9). The volume sets an ambitious purpose: “to provide some solid information, practical tools, and selected references to practitioners, advocates, policy professionals and researchers in the area of community youth development.” To accomplish this, the book is divided into three parts. Part I examines issues in youth community development related specifically to African-Americans, Latinos, American Indians, immigrants, gender, sexuality, and youth with developmental disabilities. Professionals should find particularly valuable the wellgrounded recommendations essential to building culturally 449 sensitive programs. In their chapter, Roffman, Suarez-Orozco and Rhodes illustrate by program summaries, literature references and case vignettes how adults in community-based youth organizations become mentors of immigrant youth and support their development. Denner and Griffin effectively summarize useful programmatic and staff development tools to support gender equity. Some chapters will stimulate researchers to define new topics, such as the one that examines how the revitalization movement of Native American tribes impacts the tribes and their members. The authors in Part II address “macro-level issues…in a community youth development framework”: leisure, career development, court-involved youth, character development, civic development, and youth voice. Flanagan and Van Horn’s provocative chapter on civic development raises essential questions about the importance of equal access to school and community activities. The future of democracy requires that all youth experience reciprocal ties to their communities, including both peers and adults. Youth workers who strive to achieve this goal will find this chapter challenging and instructive. Part III presents chapters on key programmatic elements: youth competence and youth voice, youth-worker competence and training. For example, Yohalem thoughtfully documents and describes the skills and knowledge needed by successful youth development professionals: • The ability to build and sustain meaningful relationships with and on behalf of youth and families (pp. 361-363) • An understanding of relevant theory and current cultural trends affecting youth (pp. 363-365) • The ability to create and maintain positive, safe learning environments in...