Youth-Adult Partnership Spotlight-January

What Matters When It Comes to Mattering

In January many youth and adults write goals.  At the basis of those goals is an important element of youth development work, mattering.  We write goals to matter to ourselves.  We write goals to matter to others in our lives.  We write goals because we believe meeting these goals will mean we make a difference, that we do matter, to the world around us.  When we matter, we dream.  When we dream, we act.  When we act, we thrive.

One of the program areas I was most grateful and proud of working in Rock County during 2020 was racial equity and social justice.  Looking into 2021, a key focus of Community Development work on a state level will be Civic Engagement and Youth in Governance programming.  Most recently reading, “We Want to Do More Than Survive” by Bettina L. Love illustrated the connection between this programming and topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Currently in 4-H Positive Youth Development we seek to lessen an opportunity gap.  As a means to address this, Community Youth Development programming, that includes civic engagement, often speaks about the impact of social capital.  Social Capital stems from the larger theory of Cultural Capital.  Social Capital is a resource that includes several elements of social well being including trusting networks among people, engagement with institutions, and connections to resources. The impacts of social capital on individual youth includes access to resources and privilege, this can develop a bridge or link to enhanced life skills and opportunity (Bourdieu, 1986).  Yet, critical race theorist Tara Yosso emphasizes ‘community cultural wealth’ which includes types of cultural capital to empower youth beyond White narratives.  These include:  aspirational, linguistic, familial, social capital, navigational, and resistance.  (138)  

As supportive adults, we are meant to open doors, create spaces, and access resources in ways youth often cannot or are not aware of.  Based on Love’s text, the adult seeking to support BIPOC youth and protect mattering includes further examination of social capital imbalances.  The most common power imbalance cited is based on age, both within youth-adult partnerships and between youth and their communities.  However, in Love’s text Meira Levinson expands the concept of opportunity gap cited above to the “Civic Empowerment Gap”.  Of note, this includes the disconnect between being informed and active versus compliant that separates character from civics education.

For January 2021, my goal is to have the civic empowerment gap conversation with my fellow adults and educators more than I have the opportunity gap conversation.  My reason for this is simple.  When I completed my Community Asset Mapping in 2019, one of the most often shared current community asset and solution to barriers that Rock County ranked was supportive adult relationships.  Unlike built community capitals or financial assets, supportive adult relationships are free of cost.   Love speaks of supportive relationships in her past that “confront imbalance of power and privilege”.  She attributed her mattering and subsequent thriving to these relationships being “not only benevolent, but they also recognized the intersections of our relationships.” (82)  While difficult, conversations and transparency, do not hold a monetary value beyond my capacity nor the capacity of my peers.  We do not need to write grants nor budgets.  These conversations cost me only the admission of my own benefits gained from systemic inequality. 

At the end of 2020, I had one such conversation with a colleague I did not yet know would frame this year’s goal.  I had not yet finished Love’s book.  Yet, despite missing Love’s exact language and theory, at one point specifically quoted as the social-psychological theory of “system justification”, I did understand from prior work with adult marginalized voices the value of the system being made visible.  In this case that translated to an explicit conversation with the youth my colleague was supporting that the lack of support and follow through for a book club that valued alternative narratives and knowledges, was not about him.  

“I don’t want him to lose faith,” my colleague had stated.  “I don’t want him to think about the organization this way.”

“But, at least he knows it’s not him,” I replied.

“I just wish they had come to the decision sooner.”

“Well, we teach about leadership all the time.  Ask him what that felt like.  Ask what he would do better.”

Though the opportunity gap remains, if we have the conversation, the civic empowerment gap might lessen.

As an adult working with youth, I encourage us to read and reread resources like those listed below so that we can protect mattering, dreaming, acting and thriving so that all youth can speak words like Love’s “My dignity was never to be compromised, which meant never compromising my voice and my connection to how I mattered in this world.” (44)  For that reason, speaking and speaking up, each resource is listed below connected to a quote I found impactful from Love’s book.

Resources

I referenced Bettina Love’s work for educators and adults who work with and advocate for youth.  

Love, Bettina L.  (2019).  We Want to Do More Than Survive:  Abolitionist Teaching And The Pursuit of Educational Freedom.  Beacon Press Books:          Boston.

For youth who are learning to advocate for themselves and their peers, I also recommend the following nonfiction book.  It includes some brief history, useful statistics and action steps.

Jewell, Tiffany.  (2020).  This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work.  Frances Lincoln: Minneapolis.

“For dark folx, thriving cannot happen without a community that is deeply invested in racial uplift, human and workers’ rights, affordable housing, food and environmental justice, land rights, free or affordable healthcare, healing, joy, cooperative economic strategies, and high political participation that is free of heteropatriarchy, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, sexism, ageism, and the politics of respectability.  These structural ideologies police who is worthy of dignity within our communities.” (65)

Wisconsin 4-H and Youth Development currently evaluates programming using the Thriving Model developed by University of Oregon Extension. In her literature review, Dr. Nia Imani Fields applies and shares frames that encompass the kinds of systems discussed in Love’s book.  https://access-equity-belonging.extension.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Literature-Review-Thriving-Model-Equity-Lens-FINAL-4.pdf

“. . . there are no saviors.  There is only a village, a community, and a goal: protecting children’s potential.” (82-83) 

University of Minnesota Extension Youth Development Blog regularly posts insights on a variety youth development topics and professional developments for youth workers.  A piece of this blog was inspired by reading a blog post about youth, mattering and COVID-19.  However, throughout 2020, Minnesota Extension often dedicated time and energy to articles on topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.  https://blog-youth-development-insight.extension.umn.edu/

“Finding joy in the midst of pain and trauma is the fight to be fully human.  A revolutionary spirit that embraces joy, self-care, and love is moving toward wholeness.”  (119-120)

During our final team meeting of the year with a group working on youth programming centered around difficult conversations about racial equity and social justice, I claimed I did not collect anything.  The number of holds I had placed just days before based on this journal’s recommendations speaks to the contrary https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=best-books-2020 In the end, I did not read each one cover to cover, but those I did exemplified the themes in Love’s quote above.

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