YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
Youth development is a process which prepares young people to meet the challenges of adolescence and adulthood through a coordinated, progressive series of activities and experiences which help them to become socially, morally, emotionally, physically, and cognitively competent. Positive youth development addresses the broader developmental needs of youth, in contrast to deficit-based models which focus solely on youth problems.
Youth development is the process through which adolescents actively seek, and are assisted, to meet their basic needs and build their individual assets or competencies. Youth development means purposefully seeking to meet youth needs and build youth competencies relevant to enabling them to become successful adults. Rather than seeing young people as problems, this positive development approach views them instead as resources and builds on their strengths and capabilities to develop within their own community. To succeed youth must acquire adequate attitudes, behaviors, and skills.
Youth development programs seek to build competencies in the following areas: physical, social, cognitive, vocational, and moral. Healthy youth development strives to help young people develop the inner resources and skills they need to cope with pressures that might lead them into unhealthy and antisocial behaviors. It aims to promote and prevent, not to treat or remediate. Prevention of undesirable behaviors is one outcome of healthy youth development, but there are others: the production of self-reliant, self-confident adults who can take their place as responsible members of society. Youth development is defined as the ongoing process in which all young people are engaged and invested. Through youth development, young people attempt to meet their basic personal and social needs and to build competencies necessary for successful adolescent and adult life. It is an approach, framework, a way to think about young people that focuses on their capacities, strengths, and developmental needs and on their weaknesses and problems.
All young people have basic needs that are critical to survival and healthy development. They include a sense of safety and structure; belonging and membership; self-worth and an ability to contribute; independence and control over one’s life; closeness and several good relationships; and competency and mastery. At the same time, to succeed as adults, all youth must acquire positive attitudes and appropriate behaviors and skills in five areas: health; personal/social; knowledge, reasoning and creativity; vocation; and citizenship.
Positive youth development occurs from an intentional process that promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing opportunities, relationships and the support to fully participate. Youth development takes place in families, peer groups, schools, neighborhoods and communities.
Youth development is the process of growing up and developing one’s capacities in positive ways. This typically takes place in the context of the family, the peer group, the school, and the neighborhood or community. Many young people do not have the advantages that promote optimal, healthy development of the body, mind, and spirit. Many youth do not have opportunities to experience positive stimulation for growth or nurturing support from family, friends, and community.
Youth development is a natural process, but it cannot be left to chance. As the Youth Development Committee of the Lilly Endowment noted (Pittman, June 1991): “Youth development ought not to be viewed as a happenstance matter. While children can, and often do, make the best of difficult circumstances, they cannot be sustained and helped to grow by chance arrangements or makeshift events. Something far more intentional is required: a place, a league, a form of association, a gathering of people where value is placed on continuity, predictability, history, tradition, and a chance to test out new behaviors.
