Race, Poverty and Youth Development

While the paradigm shift from a deficit-based to a youth development perspective moves us closer to defining promising program practices and settings that nurture positive youth development outcomes, the field has yet to address two areas critical to expanding the reach and impact of youth development programming. The first relates to effectively serving vulnerable young people who are not involved in traditional youth development activities. Field leaders such as [Karen Pittman] have identified this as a key challenge, explaining, "The youth-serving organizations and efforts that have capitalized most on the 'youth development paradigm shift' have not consistently addressed the needs of young people who are dealing with or are most at risk for poverty, school failure, family crises and problem behaviors." The second area entails mobilizing youth-serving agencies to effectively address the cultural and social contexts that mediate the potentially negative societal influences (e.g., poverty, discrimination) on young people's healthy identity development. While youth development occurs in a limited manner in formalized programs or institutional settings, it tends to occur more fully within multiple, naturalistic contexts such as family and communities over a span of time. These overlapping and nested contexts can play a positive role in supporting youth's mediation of negative messages and experiences. The quality and structure of the relationships that youth have in these settings do play a pivotal role in contributing to the development of healthy and productive coping behaviors to stresses in their lives. At the same time, however, family and community factors, such as poverty or inadequate schools, can inhibit growth and lead to the development of negative coping skills. Unfortunately, many programs tend to focus on a discrete set of activities or experiences, and in fact fail to take into account the reciprocal and dynamic interactions that take place between the individual and various contextual arenas. In doing so, they fail to support bridge-building between youth and key supports within their "multiple worlds," thus missing the opportunity to further assist them as they seek to navigate around the pitfalls of adolescence or beyond the debilitating conditions that arise from poverty and social injustices. Civic activism is being rediscovered as a particularly relevant approach for positive youth development today. Its focus on social justice issues p