Regional Strategy for Sustainability

YouthBuild Rural Initiative Regional Strategy for Sustainability
Project Overview
November 2006

The Regional Strategies for Sustainability Project is but one arm of many initiatives organized and implemented by the YouthBuild USA Rural & Tribal Development Initiative.  These initiatives together promote the level of change and impact that is necessary to achieve sustainability in a rural context.  While YouthBuild USA's ultimate aim is to impact policy, our primary work to date has been focused on capacity building at the local program level and, more recently, at the regional level. YouthBuild USA utilizes tailored, program-specific technical assistance, training, region-wide dialogues, research, and pass-through funding to:

1. Build skills of staff and young people to promote sustainable outcomes;
2. Grow a network of stakeholders, to ensure the sustainability of local programs, and their ability to coordinate their efforts towards meaningful policy change, and
3. Impact policy change, locally, regionally and nationally.

The YouthBuild USA Rural & Tribal Development Initiative offers the national network of rural/tribal YouthBuild programs technical assistance, training, and other capacity building support tailored to meet the specific needs of rural/tribal programs and the rural/tribal youth and communities they serve. Through this multifaceted approach,  YouthBuild USA has come to further know and appreciate the unique challenges rural communities face nationally and the extent to which these challenges are further exacerbated in the underserved rural regions of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the colonias/borderlands, and tribal areas. 

In order to meet these needs, YouthBuild USA serves as a change agent, strategically and systematically collaborating with YouthBuild programs, young people and stakeholders in these areas, to craft regional strategies that will address and overcome the most pressing barriers to creating sustainable communities.  Five overarching barriers have been identified:

1. Scarce community economic development activity;
2. Limited transportation systems;
3. Lack of leadership development opportunities for youth and program staff;
4. Inadequate educational opportunities; and
5. The increase of incarcerated youth.

By addressing these barriers systematically and in concert with those most impacted, youth development work will become the backbone of sustainable communities. As such, the goals of the regional strategies are to:

1. Build the operating capacity and sustainability of local programs;
2. Impact the broader policy and direction of youth development work in each region.

Certainly, these goals are linked: to impact policy, there must be strong and effective local program capacity across the region; and without effective public policy measures, rural young people will not have the education, job training, and leadership skills that they need to become self-sufficient and assume the community leadership roles needed to insure the vitality of rural communities in the future. 

In 2004, the YouthBuild USA's Regional Strategy for Sustainability was launched in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachian regions with support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.  Now with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supporting the work through 2011, YouthBuild USA is able to deepen its capacity building efforts, strengthen policy development work, and expand efforts to include the colonias/borderlands and tribal-serving areas as well.  The goal of establishing these networks is to develop the knowledge, capacity, strategic direction, and action of a critical mass of organizations, which seek to improve policy that affects people and places in all of rural America.  Participation in Kellogg's Rural People, Rural Policy Regional Network will enable YouthBuild USA, overtime, to shape policy nationally and improve the vitality of rural & tribal communities and the lives of their residents. 

To achieve these goals, YouthBuild USA has begun to:

• Engage rural/tribal young people in dialogues and create defined leadership opportunities that support young people's long-term involvement in their programs and communities to incorporate their voices into the policy dialogue;
• Work with local programs regionally to address the major barriers and policy issues already identified in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia regions and identify key barriers and policy issues in the colonias/borderland and tribal areas; and
• Build the capacity of local programs, resulting in higher program outcomes across each region to promote ongoing excellence and program integrity.

Thus far, in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta regions respectively, YouthBuild program staff has met to discuss how to make programmatic and policy progress given the five key barriers.  In these two areas, staff has begun to consider new strategies that will have the greatest impact on improving local program capacity to create systemic change for rural young people. Together, program staff is now considering these key issues with an eye towards policy change - to understand more fully the dynamics at play and enable them to define concrete action strategies to drive the next phase of collaborative work.  In the coming months, YouthBuild USA looks forward to convening the colonias/borderlands and tribal-serving area staff respectively and providing an opportunity for them to engage in a similar process.