Youth development's process

K- I found the article "Community-Based Youth Work In Uncertain Times" to be affirming. With my background in Youth     

Development and nonprofit studies I learned many underlying truths about nonprofit organizations. The deficit-based language

approach to an asset-based approach has become a way of my everyday language. I am a high school advisor for a nonprofit

organization similar to an Educational Excellence program in its later years after the leadership changes. Our program

has been the face of supporting first-generation, low-income students. Some changes have been made to the

application/acceptance policy over the 34 years. This article speaks to the organization I work with and fellow

organizations I know are actively in our community. The need for programs to support the community with afterschool

and outside school spaces during the summer and school vacation has been in high demand for decades. The article affirms the

mission drift that occurs as donors and funders become more predominant, like the 21st CCLC. I worked as a part-time employee

there during my YDEV undergrad. 

L- I found the “Decolonizing Youth Development” article challenging to grasp and understand. I learned about youth organization

s like Boys Scouts or YMCA and faith-based organizations. Boys were taught to be close to nature through tribal-like activities,

eventually crafting pan-Indian activities to mimic the tribal culture. These are White frontier boys who were given a time and

place to act barbaricly and allowed idiot nonsense in the name of character building? These Christian Ministries believed that

the themes of medieval knighthood would create ideal young men….Hall’s theory positioned Indigenous youth as inherently

different from white peers - cementing settler colonialism and continuing to HARM indigenous communities and their

youth. There was a meticulous way the youth organizations erased indigenous life. 

 

M- I wonder in what ways our activities can revitalize the understanding and connection to indigenous philosophies.