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Abstract: Youth in Antioch, California and youth in Manizales, Colombia have begun exchanging their stories and sharing responses by acknowledging each others’ stories and experiences. What might it look like if these youth were to reach out and connect with more youth around the world, to share their stories, their dreams, and their hardwon knowledge and skills? What type of social change might be possible when youth
lead dialogues for positive change?
In this article, I will share my work on strengthening youth voice and participation in the co-construction of environments in their homes, school, and community to support resilience and pathways to health and well-being. I will tell a story of a community’s commitment to creating positive change by coming together to address the issue of increasing violence.
When adults listened to youth voices, we heard that they wanted the support of adults to make changes in their community and that they needed adults to see them differently in order to develop more effective partnerships. Youth played an important role in making sense of their lived experiences, understanding how interpersonal violence impacts them, and sharing what they need from each other, the adults in their lives, and their broader community as they envisioned possibilities that might lead to more positive and generative relationships. While keeping these youth voices central, adults and youth continue to work together to explore and challenge norms that lead to violence in relationships, homes, schools, and communities. As a result of the project, youth and adults began building intergenerational partnerships to weave new narratives and to explore the possibilities that can result from youth-led positive community change. Through this project we discovered the transformative potential of youth as powerful social agents of positive change in their communities.
The project, called “Choppin’ It Up”, meaning talking it out, was implemented as part of a U.S. federal demonstration project in California called Families Thrive in partnership with the Youth Intervention Network, and the Antioch Unified School District. We worked with group of diverse high school students who had been
exposed to interpersonal violence or other significant adversity in their lives and were considered to be ‘at-risk’ or troubled.
This work was developed within a social construction orientation beginning with looking at how assumptions, judgments, and stereotypes can impact and interfere with our relationships and the possibilities and alternatives that we construct in our conversations with each other. The things we take for granted and the assumptions we make often block us from understanding each other, what we experience, and ways we find to get along in life. When we work to build a better understanding of each other, we can create a space for new possibilities.
In addition, the stories we tell and the frequency with which we tell them influence and reinforce the ways in which we construct our relationships with each other. We have an opportunity to weave new narratives and co-construct alternatives by increasing our understanding of each other, generating new ways of being in
relationships, and imagining positive possibilities for our lives and communities. We can build partnerships and engage in ongoing conversations to tell new stories that reach beyond ‘problem-solving’ to identify and co-construct possibilities and alternatives that support resilience and thriving. Through strengthening our relationships with youth in communities, we can begin to transform our understanding of the various
and unique paths youth take to create powerful identities, meaning, health and wellbeing. We can better see the strengths and the often hidden powerful resilience youth express in response to challenges and adversity.
This article will present the principles of social construction within which the project was developed. I will describe the process of working with youth and discuss ways in which this approach can be used to elevate their voices, change perceptions about youth who might be identified as at-risk or dangerous, and bring about positive social change in our schools, neighborhoods, and communities.
I want to encourage the ongoing expansion of voices in this work. Quotes from the youth in the project are sprinkled throughout this article along with other voices who have informed my thinking about how we can construct more generative relationships to propel social change. You are invited to enter into a conversation about relationships and the use of language to construct better worlds together (Hosking & Pluut, 2010). (enter directions on how to go to www.choppinitup.org or www.fortalezasjovenes.org)
Palabras clave:
Citas
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