Larson, R., Walker, K. and Pearce, Nikki.  2005.  A comparison of Youth-Driven and Adult-Driven Youth Programs: Balancing Inputs From Youth and Adults.  Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 33 (1):57-74.

Camino, L.  2000.  Youth-Adult Partnerships: Entering New Territory in Community Work and Research.  Applied Developmental Science.  Vol 4(1):11-20

Camino, Linda and Zeldin, Shepherd.  2002.  From Periphery to Center: Pathways for Youth Civic Engagement in the Day-To-Day Life of Communities.  Applied Developmental Science, Vol 6 (4): 2013-220.

Concepts in these pieces: Youth participation, youth-adult partnerships, youth and adult driven programs, youth development.

            This week´s articles went deeper into exploring different possibilities in civic engagement by looking at different kinds of youth-development programs.  Some of the questions explored by the articles were: How do adult or young driven approaches in youth development programs look like? What are the advantages and drawbacks in selecting youth or adult driven programs? “Under what conditions might one approach or the other be preferable?” “What is needed to create pathways for youth civic engagement?” This last question, for example, was addressed by analyzing structures, ownership and youth and adult partnerships (Camino 2000).  Another question that seems to have an obvious answer but that I myself needed to explore deeper was: Why the segregation between adults and youth is a problem?

            To begin with this last question I analyzed the benefits that these programs brought to both adults and youth.  I would have to say that it seems more evident the benefits to youth development but the programs are not exactly seen as adult professional development.  The purposes were more into engaging youth into action and not to bring adults into participation and engagement.  They also showed very well what adults would bring into the table[1] and the outcomes of being able to implement and structure a successful program[2] but not so strongly what was being brought by young participants.  I would say that in a way this relation was more explored in terms of the kind of problems that were more common in partnerships and in the way that these projects dealt with them. General advantages of participation were definitely introduced by the piece from Camino in its literature review.  Strong community building is here defined by having and active participation and civic engagement of its members (Camino 2002, page 12). 

One of the main problems founded to be an obstacle to develop these types of programs were a stereotyped youth based on statements related to youth behavior on adults’ behalf.  One of the consequences was the perception of youth as the “other” that shared no moral or ethical values with adults.  This of course has great effects when thinking about designing and implementing a program where projects’ outcomes will depend on the responsibility of young participants: "A frequent concern of adults is that youth do not have sufficient leadership and organizational experience to keep program activities on track and functioning effectively (Zeldin, 2004)" (Larson et al. 2005, page 59).

            About the implementation Camino’s article mentioned other kind of issues like the competition for control of resources, recognition and lack of coordinated action; this was explained by the context of this particular program:  "In a community with limited formal venues for power, individuals who were able to obtain power were not inclined to share it." (Camino 2002, page 18).  Civic engagement as expressed by Camino and others is usually defined as: “…being able to influence choices in collective action, it is the purview of every citizen, not only officials and professionals” (Camino and Shepherd 2002, page 214).  In this sense issues of power do arise even when they come from outside the programs.  In general, I thought Camino’s (2002) article was very interesting because it took external issues to the program into account, and context was earnestly addressed to understand the dynamics of segregation between youth and adults.  This is one of the points I am concerned about when reading these articles.  Sometimes I perceive that generalizations about adults and youth are made; not enough information about the context of programs is provided and connected to the outcomes of processes.  I am not sure if a behavior approach can be combined with a power analysis and maybe I am just being too extreme by thinking they are incompatible.  This was a very important quote that I think should be seriously taken: "Foucault (1970), who theorized that to understand behavior, one must understand not only the relationships between individuals and settings, but, more fundamentally, the relations among structure, process, and power that configure settings." (Camino 2002, page 16).

            This is very important because the new pathways in civic engagement introduced by Camino’s and Shepherd’s article:  Youth participation in policy consultation issues, community coalitions, decision making in organizations that intervene at high levels of governance and in school-service learning, cannot be addressed only from a behaviorist point of view that do not relate it to contextual struggles of power.  In the end, it was these new pathways explanation that allowed me to understand the importance of the impact of the segregation between adults and youth. In a way I am aware of the great inequalities and some of the kinds of oppression that young people suffer in certain contexts because they do not count on the same access to power as adults; also they have their own interests and only some adults would advocate for these but sometimes not even being clear about their desires and needs.  But also the articles express the way in which these generations question current organizations of power, inequalities, etc. come greatly from young participants that have the will to come up with different ideas on how things could be done instead of reinforcing organized orders. 

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[1] Some example of these elements brought by adults are the design of learning experiences such as exercises that developed self-confidence in Young participants, as well as, those that developed special skills, interpersonal relationships, responsibility and that passed their own knowledge on to young participants.

[2] In this direction was the development of self-confidence, a broader understanding of GLBT and ethnic groups, the development of a stronger commitment to their communities.