Summit
The
Youth Empowerment Project: The Beginnings
The
First YEP Lead Team’s Recommendations to the Community
and the
1999 Youth-Adult Partnership Summit
The First
Lead Team: In 1998, a few teens were looking around
and thinking, ‘Hmmm, how come it’s the same few
kids who are invited and who show up at meetings where adults
want teen input; how come its not a very diverse group of
kids; and how can I speak for all kids in the community…?’
So, out of their concerns and frustrations, the first Youth
Empowerment Project Leadership Team was formed.
Some members of
that first Lead Team had been involved in a local youth mapping
effort the previous year. This time they wanted to get information
from other teens so they decided to conduct focus groups in
their high schools to identify the reasons, from kids’
points of view, why more kids weren’t involved in their
community doing volunteer work or serving in a decision-making
capacity on committees with adults. After they conducted the
focus groups and came up with a lot of incredible information,
they decided to form a committee with adults who would collaborate
with them and hold a Summit where teens and adults could discuss
and form Action Teams that, in turn, could address the issues
and recommendations they were coming up with from the focus
groups.
The result was that
the Youth-Adult Partnership Summit (YAPS) united
adults and teens in efforts to form Action Teams and initiate
policy change based on teen recommendations. The first Summit
was held in 1999, and the next is scheduled for 2004. At the
February, 1999 Summit, the first YEP Leadership Team formally
presented its Recommendations to the Community
(see pdf link below), the report that resulted from the focus
groups they conducted among 15% of their peers in spring of
1998. A professional 15-minute Youth Empowerment Video
was also produced about these recommendations. (A video order
form will be available soon.) A second YEP video will be produced
for this second Summit.
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