Youth Leadership Training Research Articles

Children in All Policies (CAP) 2030 Citizen Science for Climate Change Resilience: a cross-sectional pilot study engaging adolescents to study climate hazards, biodiversity and nutrition in rural Nepal.

Young people will suffer most from climate change yet are rarely engaged in dialogue about it. Citizen science offers a method for collecting policy-relevant data, whilst promoting awareness and capacity building. We tested the feasibility and acceptability of engaging Nepalese adolescents in climate change and health-related citizen science. We purposively selected 33 adolescents from two secondary schools in one remote and one relatively accessible district of Nepal. We contextualised existing apps and developed bespoke apps to survey climate hazards, waste and water management, local biodiversity, nutrition and sociodemographic information. We analysed and presented quantitative data using a descriptive analysis. We captured perceptions and learnings via focus group discussions and analysed qualitative data using thematic analysis. We shared findings with data collectors using tables, graphs, data dashboards and maps. Adolescents collected 1667 biodiversity observations, identified 72 climate-change related hazards, and mapped 644 geolocations. They recorded 286 weights, 248 heights and 340 dietary recalls. Adolescents enjoyed learning how to collect the data and interpret the findings and gained an appreciation of local biodiversity which engendered 'environmental stewardship'. Data highlighted the prevalence of failing crops and landslides, revealed both under- and over-nutrition and demonstrated that children consume more junk foods than adults. Adolescents learnt about the impacts of climate change and the importance of eating a diverse diet of locally grown foods. A lack of a pre-established sampling frame, multiple records of the same observation and spurious nutrition data entries by unsupervised adolescents limited data quality and utility. Lack of internet access severely impacted feasibility, especially of apps which provide online feedback. Citizen science was largely acceptable, educational and empowering for adolescents, although not always feasible without internet access. Future projects could improve data quality and integrate youth leadership training to enable climate-change advocacy with local leaders.

The Mauli Ola Study: A Unique Academic-Community Partnership With MA'O Organic Farms to Understand and Address Health Inequities Among Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders in Hawai'i.

Indigenous peoples, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs), experience significant cardiometabolic health disparities arising in large part from rapid changes to their diets and food systems. Innovative food sovereignty initiatives led by NHPIs are needed to address these disparities. This article describes a community-based participatory research study that incorporates social and biological measures to examine the impact of an Indigenous-led land-based food sovereignty youth leadership program on health disparities among NHPI youth in Hawai'i. Grounded in the Indigenous knowledge that holistic health and wellbeing of people is inseparable from that of the environment and to counter rampant food insecurity in their community of Wai'anae, O'ahu, MA'O Organic Farms developed a Youth Leadership Training (YLT) program that offers education, nutrition, physical activity, and access to health care. The program also engages YLT interns and their social networks in health education and research in the ongoing Mauli Ola study. Preliminary data from this study affirm the need to address the disproportionately high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D), and poor mental health conditions among young NHPIs in the Wai'anae community, and how the YLT program may provide an effective approach to address this need. Our unique academic-community partnership underscores the importance of social and biomedical research to understand health disparities in the NHPI population, which present novel avenues to enable disease prevention. The outcomes of the Mauli Ola study may serve as a valuable model for health disparities research while leveraging ongoing social programs that support Indigenous food sovereignty.

Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany by Alessio Ponzio

Reviewed by: Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany by Alessio Ponzio Joan L. Clinefelter Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. By Alessio Ponzio. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. vii + 315 pp. Cloth $65. By the turn of the twentieth century, youth emerged as a new social category widely recognized as having enormous political potential. With Shaping the New Man, Alessio Ponzio explores how the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), its successor the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), and the Hitler Youth transformed the values of youngsters to secure the future for their totalitarian regimes. Above all, Ponzio’s focus is on the training of Fascist and Nazi youth leaders. As both a comparative and transnational study, the work contrasts the Italian and German youth training regimes and charts how they cooperated and competed with each other from the 1920s through the end of the war. Ponzio argues that “Fascist and National Socialist regimes were, first and foremost, vast educational enterprises” devoted to indoctrinating youth (8). While this rather overstates the case, he demonstrates convincingly that the Italians and Germans were committed to developing a loyal leadership cadre. Both relied on short courses and workshops to insure ONB, GIL, and Hitler Youth leaders understood how to educate and manage their commands. The Italians, however, benefited from a more centralized structure, the core of which was the Fascist Academy of Physical Education, created in 1928. Located in Rome’s Mussolini Forum, the Academy became the premier institution for youth leadership training. Through a two-year residential program, cadets graduated as either physical education teachers or committed to a career as administrators in the ONB or, after 1937, the GIL. Ponzio also explores interactions between the Italians and Germans, offering fine descriptions of exchange programs that brought together Hitler Youth and ONB/GIL leaders. He emphasizes that the Germans learned techniques and adapted ideas from the Italians. Impressed by the gymnastic displays and military precision of Italian youth who visited Germany, the Nazis sought to create their own version of the Fascist Academy. Like its Italian counterpart, the Hitler Youth Academy, located in Braunschweig, sought to reflect its values for youth in both its architecture and its pedagogy. However, because it opened in 1939, the war interrupted the Nazis’ plans, and thus the Hitler Youth institute only offered courses to one cohort of students. [End Page 137] The short courses, workshops, and academies reveal the similarities and differences in how the Fascists and Nazis trained their youth. For example, the Fascists focused more on elementary education, and because Academy graduates entered the schools as physical education teachers, the schools in Italy, Ponzio argues, were less hostile to youth leaders and their organizations than in Germany. Whether as teachers or as administrators for the ONB/GIL, Academy graduates were to make their careers in shaping the “new men” for the Fascist regime. The Germans, however, intended their leaders who completed training in Braunschweig to remain in the Hitler Youth leadership for twelve years; thereafter they would enter in either the Nazi Party, the SS, or state administration. Italians and Germans both believed their youth groups would overcome class and social divisions, but the racial purity of youth leaders was the determining factor for admission to leadership roles in the Third Reich. In Italy, loyalty to the Fascist party and state outweighed racial considerations. The German commitment to its racialist program in Europe eventually transformed the relationship between the youth organizations. Ponzio demonstrates that relations between the youth organizations mirrored those of the Nazi and Fascist states. As the war continued, the Italians, once seen as partners to be emulated, became racial inferiors to be dominated. Even as the war drastically reduced the ranks of youth leaders in both nations, the Germans believed the future of Europe rested with them. In a fascinating section on the European Youth Association (1942), Ponzio illustrates the Nazis’ intent to forge an alliance of unequal partners whose young members would accept the expected German hegemony of Europe. Ponzio acknowledges that this is no social history; he is less concerned with the actual results or the...

Sport-based Youth and Community Development: Beyond the Ball in Chicago

Rob and Amy Castañeda, the co-founders of a sports/play-based youth and community development organization called Beyond the Ball (www.beyondtheball.org), cite the collaborative and dynamic nature of the TPSR Alliance as an important influence for their work. Beyond the Ball serves individuals between kindergarten and post-college, in the North Lawndale and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago. Their programs include basketball, soccer, tutoring, mentoring and youth leadership training, and are staffed by adult volunteers as well as by local teens whom Beyond the Ball has trained. The Castañedas have been members of the TPSR Alliance since its inception in 2008 and continue to be active members representing a community entity that gives and receives much support from the group. Their story shows how teaching personal and social responsibility (TPSR) and the Alliance support sport-based community development, as well as physical education and youth sport programs at school.

The Perceived Importance of Youth Educator’s Confidence in Delivering Leadership Development Programming

A successful component of programs designed to deliver youth leadership develop programs are youth educators who understand the importance of utilizing research-based information and seeking professional development opportunities. The purpose of this study was to determine youth educator’s perceived confidence in leading youth leadership development programs. Study objectives included describing types of youth leadership development training received by youth educators, describing the number of hours of youth leadership development training received by youth educators, describing the perceived importance of youth leadership development training received by youth educators, describing youth leadership development training delivery mode preferences of youth educators, determining if the addition of hours of training received and the perception of the importance of youth leadership training improved the prediction of perceived confidence beyond that provided by differences in selected demographic variables (gender, age, years of service, education level, office location). The target population for this study was southern region 4-H youth development educators. Results of this study indicate that perceived importance of youth leadership development training is predictive of youth educator’s confidence level in teaching youth leadership development. Youth leadership development programs are a cornerstone of many youth serving organizations. The importance of youth leadership development to the core goals of programs is illustrated by its explicit inclusion in program logic models as well as its implicit presence when older youth serve in teaching and mentoring roles for younger youth. The success or failure of a youth leadership development program may be linked to many factors, one of which is the educator who leads the program. Youth educators influence program success in many ways. The focus of this study is to explore educators’ prior experiences as well as their perceived confidence in delivering youth leadership development programming. Given the strong connections between a person’s beliefs and behaviors, it is important to understand youth educators’ beliefs within the context of their prior experiences (Ajzen, Joyce, Sheikh, & Cote, 2011). This study seeks to expand the literature about youth educators’ youth leadership development training beliefs. It has practical implications for developing professional development trainings for youth educators as well as theoretical implications for advancing a deeper understanding of educators’ core beliefs about training specifically related to youth leadership development.

Youth leadership training in Hong Kong: current developments and the way ahead

This study explicates the intervention goals, domains and strategies of youth leadership training programmes in Hong Kong using data collected on the Internet. The results show that youth leadership training programmes in Hong Kong are designed and organised to achieve five goals: (1) helping young people to achieve positive development and cultivate their leadership potential, (2) enhancing the ability of young people to form interpersonal relationships and engage in team-building, (3) encouraging young people to participate in community affairs and social services, (4) fostering a national identity and a deeper understanding of the mother country and (5) equipping young people with an international outlook. These goals are achieved through five inter-related training domains, including the personal, interpersonal, community, national and international domains. The intervention strategies currently used in these programmes comprise experiential learning, adventure-based training, service learning, non-local exposure and project-based competition strategies. The characteristics of the leadership training programmes and their implications for the future development of policy and practice in Hong Kong are also discussed.

Making a Difference: Two Case Studies Describing the Impact of a Capstone Leadership Education Experience provided through a National Youth Leadership Training Program

Many youth leadership organizations exist today and provide a variety of leadership experiences. One such organization provides a week long leadership experience to high school students with its primary purpose being to guide students through a process of identifying a community need and developing a plan to address that need. This article reports on two qualitative case studies which investigate this leadership education tool and its impacts on the students’ involved, as well as the participating communities. The Living to Serve plans (LTS), the capstone leadership education experience, which the students develop are used to help students understand the process of identifying problems and solving those problems through identified steps.

Evaluation of Youth Leadership Training Programs

Results of a two-year evaluation of youth leadership programs offered within community youth development programs in Connecticut are presented. Youth involved in leadership activities were contrasted with a comparison group of youth who were not involved in leadership programming. Participants in the leadership programs reported an improved sense of support from their local communities. Leadership training also appeared to offer an added benefit to males who reported significant improvements in their social self-efficacy in contrast to females engaged in leadership programs or youth comprising the comparison group. Youth who participated in the leadership programs appeared to be a uniquely talented group of individuals, initially scoring higher than the comparison group on a variety of youth outcome measures. However, a subgroup of youth who began the leadership program at a lower level of overall functioning were more likely than youth who began the program at a higher level of functioning to report positive changes.

Empowerment Evaluation of a Youth Leadership Training Program

Due to budgetary constraints, many human service agencies are recruiting volunteers to supplement service delivery. A volunteer seeks out opportunities, in a planned manner, to help other individuals and/or groups of individuals. This paper illustrates an empowerment evaluation case study. Wandersman et al.'s (2004) empowerment evaluation principles are used to promote evaluation of the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago's Youth Leadership Training Series, a program designed to train youth volunteers.

Best of the old alongside the new: evaluating an integrated training programme for part-time youth workers

Set against the dearth of published research into the effectiveness of youth leadership training programmes, the present study describes how a comprehensive evaluation model was utilised to evaluate one such programme in Northern Ireland over a 3-year period. The training welds together a traditional curriculum approach and a competence-based methodology to provide an integrated experience for the part-time youth worker participants (n= 128). Self-completion questionnaires and follow-up interviews with a random sample of these youth workers and their supervisors were used to collect data. Outcomes suggest that the synthesis of these two training strategies is not only effective in meeting the learning needs of youth workers, but also leads to identifiable improvements in the range and quality of youth work programmes available to young people.

Social Work as Uncommon Sense

George Gammack graduated in psychology at Aberdeen University in 1968 and obtained the B.Phil, in social work from Exeter University in 1970. His work experience includes that of a child care officer in Birmingham; assistant warden at Carberry Tower, the Church of Scotland Youth Leadership Training and Conference Centre, Edinburgh; and in Glasgow that of a neighbourhood worker attached to an area team, a social worker in the psychiatric unit of a general hospital, and senior social worker at Fern Tower Adolescent Unit. He is now a social worker for Fife Regional Council in the Leven Area Office, 12 Station Road, Leven, Fife. SUMMARY Social work needs to resist pressures to identify itself solely at a superficial level of common sense responses to social problems. It has to go beyond this to recognize its use of'uncommon sense' as the means by which social workers cross the relationship gap and respond to their client's needs. The importance of doing this in the early stages of relationship, as in crisis intervention, are considered, and stress is placed on holding together both the explicit task-related aspect of the relationship, and the less obvious emotional interchange. By means of their uncommon sense, social workers are enabled to reflect for, and share with clients their areas of pain, in such a way as to render them more tolerable.

Application of a three-stage model of instruction to youth leadership training.

Application of a three-stage model of instruction to youth leadership training.

Application of a three-stage model of instruction to youth leadership training.

Application of a three-stage model of instruction to youth leadership training.