Forming Youth-Adult Partnerships

There are three conditions that should be met before embarking on a youth adult partnership:

1. Adults need to be willing to share their power and responsibility with young people
2. Young people need to be willing to take on responsibility
3. Both need skills to successfully work together

Points to consider when involving young people as partners:

1. Treat young people the same way you treat adults. This means putting all preconceived notions of young people to the side and allowing them the opportunity to shine.
2. Make a long-term commitment to involve youth. A young person’s experience with your organization may have long-lasting effects.
3. Involve youth from the beginning. If a new program is under consideration, youth should be invited to help design and critique it before it is launched.
4. Involve a diverse group of young people, not just the stars. Traditional youth leaders are obvious, but a less obvious young person may have a passion for your cause, a better perspective of the issue, and a huge willingness to participate.
5. Develop a clear vision that embraces youth-adult partnerships. Determine the level of current support of partnerships and work to increase it.
6. Involve parents and caregivers to make it easier for youth to participate. If other adults are invested, the commitment level of the young person increases.
7. Have a staff person dedicated to working with the partners – to recruit, train and support them.
8. Provide youth with meaningful ways to participate. Assign youth to committees and assign tasks that make their participation meaningful.
9. Recruit at least two young people to work in partnership with adults. Youth are naturally intimidated by adults --having a peer nearby can help boost their confidence. Also, remember it is unreasonable to expect one youth to represent all other youth.
10. If possible, provide youth with a space of their own.
11. Check attitudes constantly. Most partnerships with youth fail because of bad adult attitudes rather than a lack of aptitude.