Approaches to Positive Youth Development

Youth political activism: Sources of public hope in the context of globalization During the past two decades, positive youth development (PYD) has challenged a dominant stereotype of youth as carriers of risk and focused instead on their potential and the contributions that young people make to their communities. Most important, from our point of view, PYD has been adamant that ‘all youth,’ including those whose families are poor, whose schools are of low quality, or who in other ways do not enjoy the resources society owes them, are, nonetheless, assets to their society and should be treated that way. Our chapter builds on this assets framework and argues that it is time for PYD to take a political turn. Specifically, we contend that there are fundamental structural inequities in the distribution of familial, institutional, and community opportunities in what PYD refers to as ‘external assets.