Community Building Chronicles
October 2007
Investing in Youth Engagement for Community Change in New Mexico
Youth engagement is a social change strategy that can be embraced and
promoted by community foundations. In this edition of Community Building
Chronicles, we report on how and why the New Mexico Community Foundation
(NMCF) is providing leadership to ensure that youth are engaged in building
thriving communities. In October 2006, twelve community foundations
participated in a peer institute in Albuquerque to learn about this work,
hosted by
CFLeads, the New Mexico Community Foundation, Surdna Foundation and
Forum for Youth Investment.
The New Mexico Community Foundation understands
the power youth can bring
to community change and has utilized a variety of community leadership
roles
and strategies to ensure that young people are meaningfully engaged in
the
important civic work of building healthy communities. Through its efforts,
youth
are engaged at every level of the New Mexico Youth Initiative, the foundation’s
statewide campaign to create neighborhoods, cities and a state where all
thrive,
particularly those children, youth and families who are working hard but
have
been left behind because of the barriers of poverty and race. Look at what
the
foundation has accomplished and the roles it has played.
Youth Alliance – First
created by Executive Order, the Youth Alliance was
passed into law by the New Mexico legislature through the 2003 Youth Council
Act. The Alliance provides young people, ages 14 to 22, the means to advise
the
governor, lieutenant governor, state legislature and Children’s Cabinet
on
policies and funding priorities related to youth. A youth representative
from each
legislative district serves a two-year term and members collect information
from
their districts to develop an annual policy platform on youth issues. In
addition to
lobbying the governor and legislature, Youth Alliance members provide
information to and lobby the thirteen agencies that make up the Children’s
Cabinet.
As evidence of the Youth Alliance’s effectiveness, in 2005,
members met with the
governor and urged him to increase the number of school-based health centers.
In response, he supported legislation that has doubled the number of centers
across the state.
NMCF has been an advocate, funder and strategic partner
of the Youth Alliance
as a part of its work to build the infrastructure needed to engage and
support
youth in its state. The foundation was instrumental in forging the relationships
with a new governor and lieutenant governor to lay the ground work in 2002
for
the creation of the Youth Alliance and Children’s Cabinet. It also
incubated the
New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community, the intermediary that provides
training and technical assistance to Youth Alliance members.
As well as
building infrastructure, NMCF did not shy away from lobbying to meet
its youth development objectives. During the 2005 legislative session,
it worked
with a wide range of partners, including the Youth Alliance and communications
professionals, to create and lobby for the legislative agenda of the Growing
Our
Future Together Campaign. Young people had a high profile in the lobbying
effort, among other roles, delivering the campaign’s signature seed
packets to
state legislators to urge their support for programs such as voluntary
pre-k and
after-school programs and a new endowment called the Next Generation Fund.
This fund was subsequently created by the legislature with $2 million to
permanently endow programs for youth 0 to 24 and leverage private and
philanthropic investments. The field of interest fund created by the community
foundation to support the New Mexico Youth Initiative also leverages dollars
from
the Next Generation Fund.
Youth Organizing and Youth Media - NMCF has created
opportunities for
sustained youth voice and advocacy through investments in grassroots, youthdriven
media and organizing groups. Its support of regular radio broadcasts on
topics chosen by youth has brought youth voice to communities across the
state.
It also supports the Southwest Organizing Project that develops youth leadership
in low-income communities of color and Young Women United, a group of youth
who are organizing around issues that impact young women of color.
Recognizing that the youth organizers and members of the Youth Alliance
bring
complementary strengths to address different pressure points, the community
foundation is encouraging them to find ways to build on and leverage their
respective entry points from outside and inside the system.
Youth Engaged
in Community Foundations
Youth involvement makes a difference for foundations as well as communities.
Preliminary findings and conclusions of a study by San Francisco-based
Youth
Leadership Institute (YLI) were presented at the peer institute and indicate
compelling reasons for community and other public foundations to engage
young
people in meaningful decision-making.(1) Youth involvement strengthens
a
foundation’s connections, credibility and community knowledge. This
finding is
consistent with a comprehensive study of youth participation in nonprofit
decision-making which “found that having youth participating in significant
decision-making roles provides critical connections to larger social circles
of
youth….these connections are crucial to the success of the organization
and
could not be made by adults.”(2)
While some community foundations
have youth on their boards and/or
committees, there are many that have youth grantmaking programs. Some of
these youth in philanthropy programs have been the recruitment and training
ground for foundations to engage youth in their core work. However, an
interesting finding is that while most foundations in the YLI study have
youth
grantmaking boards, they appeared less likely than those without them to
engage
youth in decisions about more fundamental grant policies and processes.
While
a preliminary finding, this suggests that for some foundations youth grantmaking
programs may be a substitute for the more challenging work of engaging
youth in
decisions of consequence to the foundation and its community. This finding
is
somewhat tempered by the data from Michigan where the community
foundations seeded by the Kellogg Foundation in the 1980s began their youth
engagement work with a focus on youth grantmaking committees and now one
third of them have brought youth onto their boards of trustees.
Good for youth, community foundations and communities.
Engaging youth in meaningful
ways is a smart and right thing to do. It builds
stronger and more diverse community foundations and nonprofits and it can
be a
strategic way to address demographic and diversity trends. Our nation is
getting
older and more diverse. By 2050, the U.S. will have an overall population
increase of almost 50% and much of that growth will be among Hispanic and
Asian Americans. By 2030, one in five people will be over the age of 65.
The
issues raised by youth and workers who will be increasingly diverse and
retirees
who will be predominately white will have an impact on public and private
policies, programs and funds. Engaging diverse groups of young people and
adults to address community problems together is one way to help create
healthy
communities where all thrive.
What if community foundations across our country
engaged youth in their work
and then joined together to promote policies and programs that build thriving
communities? What if each state had a Youth Alliance, youth organizing,
youth
media and significant numbers of youth on public and nonprofit boards?
These
strategies alone would not create thriving communities or address the tensions
that may arise from demographic trends. But, the leadership of community
foundations to engage youth in meaningful ways in their foundations and
the life
of their communities could be an important step toward meeting these goals.
To learn more:
New Mexico Community Foundation
New Mexico
Youth Initiative
New Mexico Forum for Youth and
Community
Southwest Organizing Project
Forum for Youth Investment
Youth engagement and
community foundations
1. Youth Leadership Institute. 2006. Beyond Youth Grantmaking: Youth Participation in Community and Public Foundations. Unpublished Draft.
2. Shepherd Zeldin, Annette Kugsen McDaniel, Dimitri Topitzes, and Matt Calver. 2002. Youth in Decision-Making: A study on the Impacts of Youth on Adults and Organizations. Chevy Chase, MD: Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development.