SAYTunes

Friends,

Fulton Hawk, a friend of mine from Los Angeles has just finished the graphics for a collaborative project which The Salvation Army in the Western Territory is doing called SAYTunes which is a music-sharing website where Salvationists can share some of the innovative music they have been developing.

What's nice about this site is that like other social networking groups, this is a consumer-driven site that simply provides artists from The Salvation Army a platform to share their music - exposing this to a much wider audience.

Whether you are a part of The Salvation Army or just like good music - check this site out.

Steve

Keys to Quality Youth Development

Ellen Key's - The Century of the Child

Ellen Key's The Century of the Child is critical historical piece to read for anyone interested in youthwork. This highlights the utopian vision of youthwork that was evident at the beginning of the 20th century - a typical attribute of the modernity of that age. However, this optimism was quickly crushed by problem-centric, anti-social policies and practices that perceived of youth as a danger to society.

Key takes a very antagonistic posture toward Christianity in this book. It's rather ironic that most approaches to positive youth development these days recognize the role of faith as critical to increasing possibility and fostering resiliency.

Either way, she is a pioneer in youthwork - and for that, I tip my hat.

A Systems Model of Human Behavior

This is an excellent summary of Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory by W. Huitt regarding the ecology of human development. It is one of the most standard models incorporated into youth development models.

What is Positive Youth Development?

Positive youth development is a policy perspective that emphasizes providing services and opportunities to support all young people in developing a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging, and empowerment. While individual programs can provide youth development activities or services, the youth development approach works best when entire communities, including young people, are involved in creating a continuum of services and opportunities that youth need to grow into happy and healthy adults.

Simply put, youth development is a life process that everyone goes through. The goal of the positive youth development approach is to ensure that all adolescents experience this life stage positively.

Positive Youth Development in the United States: Research Findings on Evaluations of Positive Youth Development Programs

This paper was writted in November 1998 by the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington [Including Richard Catalano, Lisa Berglund, Jeanne Ryan, Heather Lonczak and David Hawkins].

Here are the links:

Preface
Executive Summary
Chapter One: Origins of the Positive Youth Development (PYD) Field
Chapter Two: Defining and Evaluating Positive Youth Development
Chapter Three: Empirical Evidemce on Positive Youth Development Programs and Evaluations
Chapter Four: Summary and Conclusions
References