Collective Action for Youth – Policy and Advocacy Agenda (2014)
Position creative youth development as the catalyst for dynamic cross-sector collaborations to ensure young people’s academic, professional, and personal success.
- Build organizational readiness for collaboration toward shared youth development outcomes.
- Invest in structures and strategies that facilitate collective action to support youth and their successful transitions into careers, college, and adult life.
Establish young people and their creative youth development programs as key leaders in discovering and developing opportunities to improve the livability and economic viability of their communities.
- Connect creative youth development programs with local community development initiatives to improve community outcomes.
- Amplify youth voices and strengthen their roles as key decision makers in community development initiatives.
Develop and deepen opportunities for young people to create a more just and equitable society.
- Collaborate with youth to integrate their voices and leadership into the core structures and practices of creative youth development programs and the broader sector.
- Champion creative youth development programs as spaces in which young people develop positive self-identities, recognize liberating and oppressive forces, and activate these programs’ potential for impact.
Document and boldly communicate the vital impact and experience of creative youth development.
- Invest in capturing and analyzing impact through shared language, systems, and tools.
- Demonstrate impact in order to cultivate shared ownership of creative youth development across sectors.
Support and advocate for a strong creative youth development sector with effective business models, new revenue sources, and partnerships that generate adequate funding and sustain the sector.
- Organize and mobilize as a sector to increase capacity, sustainability, and impact.
- Advocate for and develop funding strategies to increase the strength and long-term impact of creative youth development programs.