Youth Voices Influencing Local and Regional Change

This paper explores the contributions of a place-based learning initiative, Healthy Youth/Healthy Regions - participatory action research project (HYHR-PAR), to local and regional decision-making processes. The project intent was to engage teenaged youth and young adults from the Sacramento Capital Region in exploring the issues they face in their daily lives, and to document the supports and hindrances to their development that they find in their respective communities. This youth perspective serves as the foundation for change at multiple decision-making levels. The HYHR-PAR effort included three place-based learning, participatory action research projects. Youth produced videos, photographs, a web-based map, poetry and a comic book to capture their perceptions and to convey their ideas to others. In addition, they held public forums and private meetings with policy makers to present and discuss their findings. The HYHR-PAR project illustrates how place-based learning can play an innovative and effective role in engaging at-risk youth in progressive social change initiatives that improve the equity of decision-making processes in their communities and the state of the built environments in which they live.