Youth empowerment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Youth empowerment is an attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults. There are a variety of activities that may affect youth empowerment, including parenting, formal education, community-based training, governmental policy-making, and social awareness-building.

The major structural activities where youth empowerment happens throughout society include:

Community-based decision-making
Organizational planning, and
Education reform

False forms of youth empowerment include:

Consumer spending
Popular culture
Forced participation

The educational philosophies of John Dewey, Paulo Freire and John Holt are mainly premised on youth empowerment. These philosopher/educator/writers believed schools would have the greatest impact on students by centering learning on each student's life experiences. Classroom activities that empower youth include student-centered learning, popular education, and service learning. In communities, youth empowerment takes form through youth voice and community youth development programs.

Youth empowerment is often addressed as a gateway to civic engagement and participatory democracy. Many local, state, provencial, regional, national, and international government agencies and nonprofit community-based organizations provide programs centered on youth empowerment. Activities involved therein may focus on youth-led media, youth rights, youth councils, youth activism, youth involvement in community decision-making, and other methods.

Each major political party in the United States, including the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Green Party, as well as many major European, African, South American, and Australian political parties have statements supporting youth empowerment. Youth empowerment is also a central tenet of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which every country in the world (minus the U.S. and Somalia) has signed into law.