by Joanna Davidson

Lukasz Krawetkowski is an extraordinarily articulate and self-possessed seventeen-year-old. His blond ponytail and wispy chin hair hint at his artistic aspirations. He can recite several Shakespeare sonnets, in Polish. Last year, Lukasz introduced a series of student-instructed art classes in his secondary school, challenging both teachers and students to renegotiate their roles in the learning process.

Lukasz is one of a growing number of Polish young people connected with PAM (Powsechnej Akademii Mlodziezy, or Universal Youth Academy), a Polish youth organization whose mission is to spark creativity and effective civic engagement among its members. And PAM is one of a growing number of youth groups around the globe which are charting new territory in the field of youth development. Rather than inserting youth into a pre-determined set of venues and leadership-building activities, these organizations distinguish themselves as catalysts for youth initiative. Their animating purpose is to enable youth to be independent thinkers and entrepreneurial actors in whichever arenas they enter.

This inaugural issue of Changemakers introduces three organizations that elucidate this new approach to youth development: the Casa de la Juventud (Youth House) in Paraguay, PAM in Poland, and Youth Venture in the U.S.A. Each has emerged from within its country's own set of historical and social circumstances and, on the surface, each appears to be engaged in activities relevant only to their own contexts. But a bird's-eye view of these efforts and others like them reveals a pattern that cuts across their obvious differences.

The founders of these youth programs have independently and intuitively arrived at two key insights: that youth are, in fact, capable of coming up with their own ideas, defining the problems they want to address, and determining how they want to do so; and that creating the appropriate infrastructure to enable this process not only leads to imaginative, insightful, and skilled individual young people, but also contributes to a basic shift in attitudes and practices that govern the way societies relate to youth.

The central challenge confronted by these organizations – preparing youth to become responsible, healthy and engaged adults – is certainly not new. But conditions in societies at the end of the twentieth century have created at least three new factors that complicate adequate fulfillment of this age-old objective.

Most significant, there is a growing chasm between young people and adults. Within one generation there has been a 40% decline in the average amount of time American children spend with their parents. Increasingly, youth groups have taken on the role, traditionally played by the family, of building young people's confidence, teaching values, and nurturing leadership skills. Educational researchers have shown that successful youth organizations "share many of the same features that in earlier eras characterized family life." (Heath and McLaughlin, p. 625).

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"It is pointless for me to teach young people what to do – it will be outdated before I get the words out of my mouth."

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The organizations profiled in this issue represent a radical departure from this tacit acceptance of youths' place in society, and their efforts illuminate how some of the challenges unique to our times might be surmounted.

Three Case Studies

William Drayton founded Youth Venture on his belief that youth are capable of extraordinary contributions to their families and communities and that young people can spearhead significant social endeavors. This not-for-profit organization provides seed grants and mentoring partnerships which allow young people to develop and implement their own "ventures," be they tutoring programs, small shops, or radio stations.

Jacek Jakubowski and PAM have a similar agenda, or lack thereof. PAM members are invited to invent their own projects, while PAM as an institution takes a modest backseat, facilitating creativity workshops and, through its expansive network, connecting young people with one another and with other useful resources. This has resulted in a wide array of youth-driven projects, including music festivals, art shows, and environmental education endeavors.

Camilo Soares of Paraguay and Casa de la Juventud go even further. Soares, only 22 years old himself, has been instrumental in galvanizing Paraguay's youth to shape their country's agenda on many levels – whether by writing conscientious objection into the national constitution, by gaining an authoritative voice in education policy, or by taking the initiative to prevent a potential coup d'etat. Soares rejects the oft-repeated slogan that youth are the future of society. "Youth," Soares insists, "are the present."

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. . . coming head-to-head with forty years of communist-mandated
"trained helplessness"

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Each of these organizations is responding in a carefully tailored way to its home country's unique constellation of challenges and opportunities. In Poland, Jakubowski is coming head-to-head with forty years of communist-mandated "trained helplessness" and a tenacious cultural belief that government officials – not NGOs, and certainly not young people – are supposed to fix society's problems. In Paraguay, Soares is working in a "land-locked island," a relatively isolated and ignored South American country with an almost uninterrupted 120-year history of military dictatorship. Moreover, 70 percent of Paraguayans are under 30 years old, making Soares' adage that youth are Paraguay's present particularly poignant. In the U.S.A., there is an all-too-familiar list of problems that characterize youth malaise, with drug abuse, gang activity, and crime ranking high among them. Confronting these problems is exacerbated, in Youth Venture's case, by an historical lack of collaboration among institutions (schools, community organizations, youth groups) working toward common goals. As Youth Venture's approach depends on partnerships among several existing community entities, Drayton and his small team have had to forge a new brand of inter-institutional cooperation.

The Parallels

But as different as these obstacles may be from one another, Soares, Jakubowski, and Drayton have built their organizations on strikingly similar sets of assumptions. All three adhere to a strong belief that youth must be partners in their own development, not resources to be exploited or passive recipients of adult wisdom and experience. Each insists that young people must learn to work collaboratively, and that this is perhaps the single most important skill for the next millenium. And all three organizations are characterized by a commitment to helping others, to active engagement in solving social problems.

Kirk Astroth, a North American youth development expert, has promulgated the notion of "vibrancy" which may help to distinguish the culture of these youth programs from the approaches of more traditional and familiar ones. Vibrant youth groups are "founded on and practice a set of philosophical beliefs that value young people and their ability to be actors in building their own futures." (Astroth, p. 7).

How do such lofty ideals get translated into concrete action and stable, effective institutions? Boiled down, these institutions have the following essential ingredients:

• A loose, perhaps even ephemeral, institutional structure in which youth determine and develop their own projects. As Jakubowski insists, "PAM itself does not do anything."
• A mechanism – creativity workshops, seed grants, or gender-bending games – through which to tap into young people's innate curiosity and their ability to think beyond established and rigid categories, to invent new ways of addressing old problems.
• A connection between youth and adults in which adults are brought in as mentors and skill builders, but not as authorities who determine what youth will and will not do.
• A non-partisan space for youth to explore ideas outside the often-oppressive strictures (such as political parties, religious groups, and schools) that dominate their societies.
• A strategic approach that sets challenging but realistic goals, so that young people can build from their successes, rather than being consumed and deflated by their failures.
• A culture of mutual support and risk-taking, in which "mistakes can be viewed as opportunities to learn, not as catastrophes that must be 'fixed' by adults coming to the rescue." (Astroth, p. 7).

Measuring Success

How can we judge whether these programs are on the right track? How do we even begin to assess their impact? Measuring social impact is a thorny challenge for most organizations that are trying to reach often unquantifiable, sometimes quite amorphous objectives. Documented results tend to be suggestive and short-term. Most of these groups have formally existed for only a few years, and attainment of their overarching goal – to create a cadre of civically responsible adults – is still a long way off.

We can, perhaps, outline two overlapping dimensions of projected impact: outcomes for the individuals and changes in the social fabric. Drayton discusses the former facet in terms of engaging in a Youth Venture-type experience. First, the process of establishing his or her own organization has profound impact on the venturer. "Every young person who . . . creates an ongoing organization knows deeply that (s)he is competent and powerful." This impact spills over into the immediate peer group – the other young people drawn into the organization – who benefit by learning to work together and who gain valuable experience in formulating and managing an original venture. Additionally, as all "youth ventures" have a community service element, there is a direct impact on the "clients" or beneficiaries of the endeavor. Unmet needs are filled as a result of young peoples' initiative

How does this sense of ability and achievement change society? How will a new generation of creative, confident, competent, and collaborative adults shape its culture? What broader, deeper scratches on history will such efforts in youth development make?

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. . . such victories will provide powerful lessons in how to build
a truly democratic society.

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Lukasz Krawetkowski's future is wide open and unpredictable. But as he explores his options, he will no doubt be buoyed up by the skills he gained through participation in PAM. "PAM has broadened my point of view," explains Lukasz, "which has enabled me to do things on a larger, better scale." Quite an accomplishment for an organization that purports to do nothing at all.

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References

Astroth, K.A. (1997). Beyond Resiliency: Fostering Vibrancy in Youth Groups. New Designs for Youth Development, Volume 13, No. 4.

Heath S.B. & McLaughlin, M.W. (1991). Community Organizations as Family. Phi Delta Kappan, 72, 623-27.