Providing Spark and Stability: The Role of Intermediary Organizations in Establishing School-Based Youth-Adult Partnerships

Theorizing Organizational Learning to Enhance Youth-Adult Partnerships in Community-Based Youth Serving Organizations

Youth-adult partnerships are intentionally cultivated intergenerational relationships characterized by shared power among youth and adults. Although youth-adult partnerships (Y-APs) are widely adopted as a strategy to promote key positive development outcomes in youth service organizations, research documents various challenges that affect their quality implementation. This critical literature review presents a theoretical framework for how community-based youth service organizations may enhance youth-adult partnership quality through organizational learning. The main premise is that Y-AP implementation challenges are best understood as challenges of collective learning within an organization. As such, the review integrates theory and research in organizational learning with present scholarship on Y-APs to delineate how two learning processes-intra-group and inter-group knowledge transfer-influence Y-AP quality. These learning pathways exist in dynamic interaction at different levels of the organizational hierarchy, at the point of service and beyond. The theoretical framework provides a road map for effective functioning of Y-APs in practice and an interpretive lens for descriptive and intervention research to understand and address Y-AP challenges.

Applying a Social Justice Lens to Youth Mentoring: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Practice

Youth mentoring interventions are often designed with the intention of promoting improved outcomes among marginalized youth. Despite their promise to reduce inequality through the provision of novel opportunities and increased social capital to marginalized youth, youth mentoring interventions hold the potential to reproduce rather than reduce inequality. In the current review, we explore literature on youth mentoring that has incorporated a social justice lens. We conclude that there is a need for greater attention to principles of social justice in the design, implementation, and evaluation of youth mentoring interventions. After reviewing the literature, we make recommendations for research and practice based on a social justice perspective and explore alternatives to traditional youth mentoring that may allow for better alignment with social justice principles.

Comparing the Functioning of Youth and Adult Partnerships for Health Promotion

Youth partnerships are a promising but understudied strategy for prevention and health promotion. Specifically, little is known about how the functioning of youth partnerships differs from that of adult partnerships. Accordingly, this study compared the functioning of youth partnerships with that of adult partnerships. Several aspects of partnership functioning, including leadership, task focus, cohesion, participation costs and benefits, and community support, were examined. Standardized partnership functioning surveys were administered to participants in three smoke-free youth coalitions (n = 44; 45 % female; 43 % non-Hispanic white; mean age = 13) and in 53 Communities That Care adult coalitions (n = 673; 69 % female; 88 % non-Hispanic white; mean age = 49). Multilevel regression analyses showed that most aspects of partnership functioning did not differ significantly between youth and adult partnerships. These findings are encouraging given the success of the adult partnerships in reducing community-level rates of substance use and delinquency. Although youth partnership functioning appears to be strong enough to support effective prevention strategies, youth partnerships faced substantially more participation difficulties than adult partnerships. Strategies that youth partnerships can use to manage these challenges, such as creative scheduling and increasing opportunities for youth to help others directly, are discussed.

Expanding the reach of youth mentoring: partnering with youth for personal growth and social change

The goals of youth mentoring have broadened from redressing youth problems to promoting positive youth development. Yet, many of the principles associated with contemporary conceptualizations of development found in the positive youth development (PYD) and community psychology (CP) literature have yet to be fully integrated into mentoring research and practice. These approaches place greater emphasis on youth as assets to their communities and the promotion of positive development through the cultivation of these assets, often by fostering collaborative partnerships between youth and adults to effect social change. In this paper, we examine how bringing these systemic, asset-oriented approaches more fully to bear on the youth mentoring process creates opportunities that may both extend the reach and deepen the impact of youth mentoring through the promotion of community, social, and individual change.