Community-Based Youth Leadership 2 Community-Based Youth Leadership: A Pathway to Civic Engagement

Democracy requires people to learn, listen, dream and work together as they unleash their collective potential and create a just and equitable society. Too often, young people are excluded from democratic deliberation or relegated to age-segregated opportunities with little impact on democratic structures, such as service learning and youth advisory commissions. This tendency to minimize the contributions of youth is ironic since young people’s enthusiasm, idealism, and capacity for innovation have helped to catalyze democracy over time and around the world (HoSang, 2003; Yates & Youniss, 1999). Neither young people nor older adults can create positive community change on their own. True democracy is inclusive. It calls for the crossing of traditional age, cultural, political, and institutional borders. It demands openness to new opportunities and fresh understandings while building on deeply rooted traditions, experience, and history. This paper describes four insights gleaned from organizations where youth are learning and leading as partners in democracy. The organizational profiles, drawn from various initiatives and partnerships coordinated by the Innovation Center, including the Ford Foundation-funded Youth Leadership for Development Initiative, collectively point to four promising practices for organizations and communities to engage young people as leaders i