Additional Resources and Links

Forum for Youth Investment
http://www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/
The Forum for Youth Investment is dedicated to increasing the quality and quantity of youth investment and youth involvement by promoting a “big picture” approach to planning, research, advocacy, and policy development among the organizations that invest in children, youth, and families. To do this, the Forum is committed to building connections, increasing capacity, and tackling persistent challenges across the allied youth fields. More recently, it has become an active player in helping make students partners in school improvement. A recent publication, Youth Action for Educational Change: A Resource Guide, offers an annotated list of useful research, frameworks, stories, and studies. Download PDF (12pp)

Northwest Regional Education Lab (NWREL)
http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/scc/studentvoices/index.html
In 2000, NWREL developed a toolkit called Listening to Student Voices that offers pragmatic, manageable ways for schools to conduct self-study aided and enriched by student help. The four tools are: Structured Reflection Protocol, a time-efficient dialogue process centered on improving student learning and student work; Student-Led Focus Group, a way to hear students while enabling adults to listen and use what they hear; Data in a Day, a technique that allows a school to involve many stakeholders and quickly gain data on an issue important to the school community; Analyzing Surveys with Kids, a simple process that engages students as a school data collection and analysis workforce. An introductory package includes an informational brochure, a booklet describing the four tools, four stories of schools that have used the tools successfully, and a 10-minute video showing the tools in action. To order entire toolkit, click here. To order introductory package, click here.

Opportunity Gap Project
For three years, one hundred inner-city and suburban youth researchers and their adult partners at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York have examined educational inequality in their schools. One of the first lessons the project’s 100 student participants taught their adult researchers was to modify the oft-used phrase “achievement gap” to put the onus for failure where it rightly belonged; “opportunity gap,” the youth argued, pointed more accurately to the schools and the “system,” rather than pupils. From that point on, they referred to their work as the “Opportunity Gap Project.” Using survey data from over 10,000 students, focus groups, and interviews, the students uncover how race colors learning in too many American classrooms. To read a recent WKCD interview with the project’s two lead adult researchers, Michelle Fine and Maria Elena Torre, click here. (PDF, 7pp.)

SoundOut.org
http://www.soundout.org
A program of the Washington-based Freechild Project and the Human Links Foundation, soundout.org is a national online resource center designed to promote meaningful student involvement in school change. The site posts success stories of student-led efforts to improve schools, including those where youth participate in researching, planning, evaluating, and advocating for schools. Hundreds of online publications also make available bibliographies, articles, and research reports about meaningful student involvement. The site provides online discussion forums, links to other resources, and a monthly newsletter. A collection of new publications all related to “Meaningful Student Involvement” can be downloaded here. Guide (26pp.) Research (38pp.) Stories (42pp.) Resources (44pp.)

Youth in Focus
http://www.youthinfocus.net/
Started in 1991, Youth in Focus is a non-profit consulting and training organization with the mission of supporting youth-led research, evaluation and planning. Its work is rooted in the belief that youth can effectively partner with adults to address social and organizational challenges, and that these partnerships are crucial to making just, democratic, and sustainable social change. Through its Youth REP program, young people play lead roles in designing and carrying out research or evaluation projects that can initiate or change a program, community initiative, or policy that affects them and their peers. Youth in Focus recently created a step-by-step guide to helping develop successful youth-led research and evaluation projects. To order a copy, click here.

Youth Action Research Institute/ Institute for Community Research
http://www.incommunityresearch.org/research/yari.htm
The Youth Action Research Institute (YARI) of the Institute for Community Research was formed in 1996 based on nearly a decade of work on youth-led action research for development, risk prevention, and social change. It trains adolescents to do ethnography-based action research for personal growth, group development and community change in summer and year-round programs. It also trains educators, youth workers, service learning program facilitators, and social science interns to use action research methods and cooperative education in their classrooms and programs. The institute’s publications include a Participatory Action Research Curriculum for Empowering Youth that outlines in detail how to help youth discover, collect information about, and take action on issues that directly affect them and their communities. To order a copy, click here.

Youth Leadership Institute
http://www.yli.org/
Although based in San Francisco and focused on California, the Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) is recognized nationally as a leader in creating systems that support positive youth development. It provides programs, training, and technical assistance to young people, most of all, but also to youth advocates in education, health, community development, and policy. Its specific areas of expertise and emphases are youth philanthropy, policy and civic engagement, and linking prevention with youth development. YLI has a variety of publications available, designed to increase the capacities of both youth and adults to build communities that invest in young people. Of special note are Tools for Social Change, which introduces students to the forces that influence policy making and the challenges in trying to create "good policy," and Youth Adult Partnership Curriculum, a 266-page manual that offers training exercises, tools, and support materials to build on and develop the capacity of youth and adults working in partnership. To order copies, click here.

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