I really enjoyed reading these two chapters. They were quite full of information, resources, and they were written by highly educated members of the Youth Development field.
While reading these however I started to ask myself the same question over and over again, "Where are they now?" What support do they receive now? What colleges are they at? What resources do they have in college? Does the work and the change stop when they are no longer "youth"?
In Chapter 1 of At our Best, the authors discuss the youth lead national movement to end gun violence started by the student survivors of the Parkland Florida School Shooting. The students who survived this horrible mass shooting organized marches, rally's, and protests to end gun violence's. The students of this school were being shown on every major news network for weeks after the shooting. They even started there own organization, Never Again, however now it has been almost three years since this shooting and the names and faces of this movement have completely disappeared. This happens so often with youth started and youth driven organizations. How do we create places that the wok doesn't stop because the youth are no longer youth anymore?
What really struck me about Youth In Action was how selective this place was. I have been hearing about this group for a few years now and I did not realize how almost exclusive this group was. The application process alone is lengthy and they only accept about 35 students a year! This number was shocking to me. There retention rates are absolutely incredible however how many youth are being left out of this process? Again however YIA only serves youth in High School. What happens to the movements and waves the students cause in there 4 years in the program? Where is the long term support? What if by 9th grade students all ready feel so disconnected and lost they don't think they belong in a group like YIA? Even in chapter 1 they state these models work best with older youth, so where is the space for the littles?
How many moments created by youth never become a movement because the age out of a program?
