Embracing the Opportunity to Innovate: 5 Youth Development Strategies that Should Survive After the Pandemic Ends
Last week, I received an e-newsletter from a local non-profit that referenced a recent article in the Financial Times from author Arundhati Roy. In the article, Ms. Roy states:
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
“We can choose to walk through it, dragging… our dead ideas… behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
The quote got me thinking about how this pandemic can become a portal for youth development organizations to rethink their program ideas of the past and inspire them to imagine new strategies moving forward. The big question as I see it is this: Can organizations take what they’re learning during these unprecedented times and “walk through lightly,” ready to innovate their youth development models, or will they resist the opportunity to try out new ways of engaging young people as they wait patiently to return to the status quo?
During the COVID-19 crisis, I have had the privilege of observing six different youth development organizations in Maine as they have positioned their programs and empowered their staff to experiment with different strategies in order to engage their youth. They’ve moved forward, ready to try multiple program strategies, and open to failing. They all seemed to understand that failure could be their friend, ultimately leading to successful strategies that they would be ready to fight for in the long run.
In the spirit of innovation, I offer five key strategies that all youth development models should be sure to keep as they move forward:
1) NEW POLICIES THAT LOWER BARRIERS IN PROMOTING THE STAFF/STUDENT RELATIONSHIP
Since the COVID-19 crisis began, I’ve been on numerous state and national Zoom calls with youth development organizations of all sizes and shapes. What I discovered was just how many organizations have been scrambling to figure out how to empower their program staff to interact with their clientele now that those students are no longer walking into their buildings. Toward this end, executive leaders have been critically examining their missions, policies, systems, and the protocols that have historically kept their program staff from interacting with students outside of direct programming. During this pandemic, many organizations have replaced these policies with new ones that help lower the barriers and allow youth development professionals to interact with students safely online, by text, apps, and video conferencing. By relaxing these protocols, program staff have been able to build deeper relational links to their students beyond programming and offer a 360-degree support system for their students in real time. This approach has helped shift the focus away from individual program activities and more towards student-focused relationship building strategies. I believe that this can only be a good thing and that these new policies, systems, and protocols should be extended after this crisis is resolved.
2) FOCUS ON THE FAMILIES/CAREGIVERS
Over the past seven weeks, many youth development organizations have empowered and given permission to their program staff to not only reach out to their students, but also to check-in with families to better understand what their needs are during this pandemic. For most programs, the interaction between caregivers and program staff has historically been transactional rather than relational. The interactions are mostly kept to filling out paperwork, writing checks, arranging for drop-offs or pick-ups, or setting up a meeting to discuss a behavioral management challenge. This hasn’t been for a lack of interest in building more intentional relationships with caregivers, but youth program staff have simply lacked the bandwidth to support this type of outreach in the past.
To be fair, it also hasn’t been a part of the mission… until now. With so many parents and caregivers negatively impacted by the coronavirus, programs have broadened their programmatic objectives to include a special focus on the entire family system. Many staff members have become frontline first responders by doing needs assessments and connecting families to much needed services in their communities and beyond. A byproduct of these important steps is that caregivers are now much more bought into the programs that their students are participating in. As a result, staff members now have a bi-directional relationship with not only their students, but also the caregivers. This outcome will improve program results and student retention, help families, and strengthen communities. The new focus on building solid relationships with the overall family system should be maintained in some capacity within all program designs moving forward.
3) BUILDING THE CONNECTION TO THE LARGER COMMUNITY SUPPORT SYSTEMS
It’s hard sometimes for youth development organizations to break out of the silo mentality and look beyond their own walls to connect with and take advantage of the community support systems all around them. However, now that so many of our young people and their families are struggling to meet their basic needs, organizations are going beyond the scope of their missions by partnering with local schools, key community stakeholders, health services, and other youth advocate agencies to help provide families the most expedient and direct pathway to the critical services they need. After the pandemic is over, this type of asset mapping and collaboration must continue to be a priority for all communities. Families become even stronger when the network of systems that have been built to serve the community are interfacing with one another. Collaboration—not competition—should be at heart of every agency’s mission post-pandemic.
4) SHARING POWER WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
When all in-person programming literally stopped overnight, many youth development programs were left searching for how best to engage their students. The old model of students walking down the street or being dropped off by their parents and entering their buildings was now over and all of a sudden the power dynamic shifted from the adult, who ran the program, to the student who now stayed at home with a variety of online options to occupy their time. From YouTube, to Netflix, to gaming, to TikTok, and so much more, students who had access to the internet now have all the time in the world to choose what they want. This dynamic has led youth development professionals to figure out ways to meet students where they are by giving young people more input into the program design, delivery and decision making. In short, staff found themselves forced to adapt, or they would no longer have any interface with their students. By sharing power, staff found that their kids now have more buy-in to the program offerings, which now feel more relevant to the students’ interests. Many staff I’ve talked to have shared with me that as each week goes by, attendance has increased. When I inquired about why they thought this was happening, they shared that it was because they have opened up their program designs by giving students voice and choice—thus giving them an equal voice in the process. By turning the educational process over to young people and trusting that they are the experts of their own experience, students begin to feel valued and taken more seriously. It’s my hope that this is only the beginning of sharing power with students and offering them agency over the program design in the future.
5) HONOR THE INTROVERTS, KEEP ONLINE PROGRAMMING
It’s no secret that most youth development models have been designed and implemented by extroverts. These models then seem to attract charismatic, Type-A personalities who want to come and run them. Once these staff members are in place, they tend to build curriculum, rituals, and routines within their program designs that match their own developmental makeup. Young people who are inclined to direct their thoughts and behaviors towards the physical world tend to thrive in these program designs. However, students who are more likely to internalize their thoughts and behaviors and keep them hidden from the outside world can sometimes struggle in youth programs that have been designed to play to the strengths of the extrovert. The more introverted students can have a hard time keeping pace with highly interactive, interpersonal skill-building activities as they work to find their voice and a comfort level within the program. The introvert certainly has something to contribute, and you can bet that student is taking everything in and, in the right circumstances, would probably love to share thoughts and feelings. In the end, though, they prefer and need space—space to think, space to reflect, and space to process. They also need physical space from their classmates and can feel overwhelmed by the intensity of the positive human interactions that most youth programming seems to promote.
One of the discoveries I’ve made during this pandemic is that virtual programming is more likely to accommodate an introvert’s developmental makeup. In talking with numerous youth development organizations, program managers have reported that online platforms like Zoom, Discord, Slack and Band seem to provide enough of a buffer for these students to engage the group process with more curiosity and confidence. Perhaps it’s because they are at home and aren’t forced into activities where they have to physically interact with their peers, or maybe it’s because these formats provide multiple ways of expressing their thoughts and feelings (emojis, whiteboards, digital photographs, reaction buttons, videos and more) rather than the spoken word. If these students are feeling safer and more connected by participating in these types of online platforms, youth development organizations should consider embedding these strategies into many of their program models moving forward.
The youth development field’s ability to innovate, adapt, and pivot during the pandemic will lead to progress. If we can let the “dead ideas” of the past go and replace them with new concepts that consider where students are developmentally, that seek to serve the whole family unit, that share power with young people and works together in partnership with the entire community—we will emerge from these challenging days stronger, more unified, and energized to fight for the many lessons learned. If we can stay the course and find the courage to keep trying new things, the young people we serve will be the biggest recipients of those efforts. And in the end, what a great lesson to teach our students—that when the conditions on the ground change in life—you either courageously adapt or get left behind.