How to Get to Real Youth Empowerment

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Something is not right about youth empowerment.

Adam F.C. Fletcher

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Youth empowerment is a tricky concept that makes a lot of adults feel good about ourselves.

We see ourselves as “handing over the reigns” and “giving up” control in order to teach young people magical lessons about power, control, and authority. Comparing ourselves to others, we adults often preach the value of youth empowerment and advocate its great abilities throughout our society. However, something is not right about that.

While my daughter is growing up I take it as my responsibility to be consistently conscious and aware of her needs, responsibilities and rights as a fellow human being who I am lucky enough to share those needs, responsibilities and rights with. And by “share” I don’t mean “give to”; instead, I am talking about the reciprocal exchange of authority and duty, by which she allows me to care for her needs while I am allowed to expand and build her mind, her hands and her spirit. That’s an awesome thing.

5 Tips to REALLY Empower Youth

Here are 5 tips I follow to help really empower my daughter and the young people I work with regularly.

1. Don’t dismiss everything the adults in your life did.

Parents, teachers, preachers and scout leaders had some right ideas mixed in there. Those times your dad let you run the power saw after he taught you how to do it? That was good. Him coming along after you were done and recommending how you could do better? That was great.

I know it can be hard for young people to hear criticism from adults, but honestly that is our responsibility. It is wrong to demean or destroy a young person, but it is right to offer corrections and identify opportunities for growth.

2. Don’t do everything you learned in Youth Development 101.

While Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget and many others had good and right concepts regarding the development of children and youth in Western societies, they aren’t always right.

Around the world these days more credence is given to the concept of evolving capacities than youth development, and those readers in the U.S. should check out that idea, too. There’s more to the world than convenient staircases; let’s look at the options.

3. Avoid youth programs that claim to empower youth.

There’s an old Buddhist saying to the effect of “Those who say they are humble are not.” That’s true a lot of the time with youth empowerment programs, too.

Organizations and adults that are in the business of building the capacities of youth, creating and fostering opportunities for “wide-world learning” and breaking through the barriers of oppression that young people face simply do that work – they don’t make grand pronouncements about their desire to see youth running the world because they are busy seeing to it that young people can run the world, either today or in a near future.

4. Get out of the office.

If you are a youth worker who spends five hours a day in an office and three hours with youth, make a resolution to flip those numbers. If you’re a researcher who meets with young people twice monthly, flip that number.

Real youth empowerment requires real youth, and that’s an important key for all adults to remember. In the same way, if you are constantly exposed to the same youth, go find some others for a day. Reflect on why you like your constituency, why you love your job, why you want to really empower young people.

5. Don’t look for a magic bullet.

We have to get past quick fixes and simplistic responses to the sophisticated, complex worlds that young people occupy today. There are no magic bullets.

Cooperative games don’t work in some groups; community organizing isn’t effective in every situation; youth voting won’t cure political corruption right away; intergenerational equity will take lifetimes to achieve.

Let’s stick in it for the long haul and do the good things we need to do.

These are some simple tips – let me know if you have anything to add.