Youth Empowerment Strategies
PI - Leonard Syme
Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA
This proposal, Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!), is for an innovative after school program for underserved children living in West Contra Costa County, CA. The YES! program will commence when children are in grade 5 and will work with them through grade seven, across the social and developmental transition into middle school. Modeled on principles of individual and community capacity building and participatory research, the ultimate goal of YES! is to help vulnerable children have healthy, fulfilling lives and a sense of hope for the future, by promoting critical thinking, problem-solving, social action and civic participation, and by helping children identify and build on their individual, group and neighborhood assets. The specific aims of YES! are to test the hypotheses that Photovoice, empowerment education, and other participatory research approaches will (1) influence empowerment at the individual, group, and community levels, and (2) influence children's health attitudes and behaviors. In the first year of YES!, the focus will be on developing children's individual communication and group work skills, as well as on developing an understanding of critical thinking. Approaches to be used in this first year will include Photovoice, during which students use cameras to document things important to them in their own lives. In the second year, YES! program students will develop a deeper and more meaningful capacity for critical dialogue, reflection, and social action. Collaboration with the local health department's Healthy Neighborhoods Project will further facilitate the students' use of tools, such as community asset and risk mapping, as a basis for study and action. In the third year, students will identify community leaders with whom they would like to undertake community projects.
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Page last modified: September 28, 2006
Content source: Office of the Chief Science Officer (OCSO)
