A Policy Statement from the National Alumni Council and the Young Leaders Council of the YouthBuild USA Affiliated Network
Introduction
This Declaration of Inter-Dependence was first written in 1999, updated in 2004, and again in 2008, by the YouthBuild National Young Leaders Council and the YouthBuild National Alumni Council. These councils include young leaders elected by our peers to participate in policy development for the YouthBuild Network.
We directly represent 76,000 young people who have been YouthBuild students. All of them were raised in a poor environment that caused them to become disconnected from society; but, like us, they were fortunate to find a YouthBuild program in their community that helped them rediscover their potential and find direction towards fulfilling their goals. However, too much unnecessary suffering took place prior to their finding YouthBuild. It is our goal to change the conditions in our communities to ensure that future generations have a direct and less painful path to success.
We indirectly represent 2.4 million low-income youth who either dropped out of high school or obtained their diploma but could not find employment. We also indirectly represent low-income youth that have been imprisoned. These groups have no direct representation. We speak for them and hope they will also raise their own voices.
Basic Assumptions
- All people are created equal and have a natural desire to fulfill their potential and take responsibility for the well-being of themselves and the people they love.
- People are most likely to fulfill their potential and become contributing members of society if they have food and shelter, a loving family and positive peer group, opportunities for learning, an organized community, protection from violence, and something to believe in.
- Poverty, neglect, abuse, and deprivation of all kinds can prevent people from reaching their potential and enjoying life.
- Most people who have fallen off the track, suffered losses, and made mistakes can recover. If given a chance, they can learn to cope with obstacles, and care effectively about themselves, their families, and communities. They can gain the skills and attitudes to become strong, successful leaders who will help others overcome these obstacles.
- We need more effective and caring leaders in our communities all over the world.
Our YouthBuild Experience
We have seen thousands of YouthBuild students transform their lives. They become a positive force for good instead of a negative force in their communities. The source of this transformation is the genuine love found in YouthBuild programs. The YouthBuild staff open doors and support us in our learning. They teach us the skills we need to succeed. We learn to trust each other. We gain a positive peer group as well as adult mentors. We become a family.
YouthBuild has supported our determination to transform our lives, and has created the environment for us to heal from bad experiences. We are grateful for that. We want to help insure that every young person who needs a YouthBuild program can find one. But more than that, we feel called to improve the basic conditions in our communities.
Policy Recommendations
To enable all children and youth to thrive, improvements need to be made in the following areas:
- The public school system
- Family supports
- Economic development in low income communities
- The justice system
- The environment
We have briefly addressed each one below.
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The Public School System
The opportunity to be part of a school community in which people care about each other and learn positive values, leadership and life skills, academic and vocational skills, and where young people’s input is respected, should be a basic right for all children and youth.
Most of our constituents did not complete high school in their first try. In some cases the schools failed the students; in others the students failed themselves. Sometimes it was a mixture of both the schools and the students failing. But in any case, it is necessary to change the public school system so that more youth achieve success
From our experience in public schools and in YouthBuild, students will achieve success and happiness under the following conditions:
- The teachers and staff really care about the students; they go above and beyond their job duties. Teachers challenge students and make sure they learn what they are supposed to learn. Students receive individualized attention to overcome obstacles.
- Students don’t slip through the cracks, because classes are small. The teachers know the students as individuals. The whole school is small enough for students to be at ease with each other so that learning is not blocked by fear. Students feel safe asking questions in front of each other, and helping one another. They become a community committed to each other’s success.
- The curriculum is not just academics. It includes hands-on projects, community service, sharing with each other, learning about each other’s heritage, and studying society. Students learn leadership skills and positive attitudes.
- The academic curriculum is connected to a vocational curriculum, so for students eager to prepare for a good-paying job and not planning to go to college, the path is clear.
- At the same time, all students are encouraged to know that they can aspire to go to college if they choose, and the teachers will help them prepare to succeed. Information about how to obtain scholarships is available.
- Access to computers and computer literacy training are offered.
- Students participate in making the policies governing the program, so the policies match their needs.
- The school curriculum addresses the concept of self-transformation, life skills, conflict resolution, how to deal with real world problems. The art of setting and achieving goals is taught and reinforced throughout grades K–12.
- Qualified teachers and counselors are hired. They receive good pay and excellent training, including diversity training.
- The faculty includes individuals who have similar backgrounds to their students so they can serve as role models and understand students’ perspective from their own experience.
The above elements are interconnected. They all need attention.
To achieve these goals in the public schools in our communities, we believe the inequalities in funding for the public schools in low income communities compared to suburban and wealthy communities must be corrected.
If education is the key to escaping the culture of poverty, as we believe it is, then our nation needs to invest in the education of America’s low-income children. But money alone will not do the job without a caring community in the schools, qualified caring teachers, and an interesting, relevant, and practical curriculum.
Every person deserves an equal opportunity to receive quality education regardless of income level.
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Family Supports
When families struggle and many times fail to provide the most basic necessities of life such as food and shelter, young people are unable to focus on education and their future. Families need some very basic things:
- Parents need information about how to access quality jobs at a living wage, food and shelter, and health care for themselves and their children
- Families need quality childcare programs that are affordable as well as after-school programs that include help with homework and opportunities for the children to play sports and be outdoors in a safe environment.
- Families need support groups and training for parents. Knowing how to be a good parent is not automatic. Developing awareness that our children learn from what we do more than from what we say is important.
- The process of screening and training foster parents should be improved.
- Teenagers should be encouraged to delay having children until they are capable of providing a stable family.
- Prevention of drug and alcohol abuse among parents is necessary for good parenting. If drug and alcohol abuse could be prevented or effectively treated, the quality of life for millions of children would be dramatically improved.
- Families need expanded mental health services to address depression, suicide, bipolar and schizophrenic symptoms, and self-destructive behaviors of all kinds; but at the same time, we believe there is currently over-medication of active children simply to make them more compliant.
- Families need to live within a culture that teaches positive values and supports positive spiritual traditions. The violence portrayed in the mass media is having a terrible effect on children and undermines hardworking parents’ ability to raise their children with positive and peaceful values. We need a cultural shift that diminishes pressure on youth to mimic negative actions, and that gets the children off the couches in front of the TVs and video games into healthy activities of all kinds.
- More collective responsibility from the whole community is needed. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.
Community Economic Development
Not only do most families living in a low income community lack the information and resources they need, but the community as a whole lacks resources that could support the families. Elected officials and policy-makers should develop strategies for community economic development. We propose the following:
- Quality and affordable housing should be built, and preserved, not torn down or replaced with gentrified housing for wealthy people. Policies should be implemented that promote homeownership for low-income people. Provisions should be made to provide low-income people access to low interest loans for homeownership and protection from foreclosure.
- Low-income communities should have jobs and careers available that allow people to earn a livable wage with the benefit of health care for themselves and their children. Also, people coming out of prison need to have access to employment and education.
- Adequate public transportation must be available in both urban and rural areas. • Low-income community members should have the chance to start small businesses and become self-sufficient. Locally-owned and minority businesses should be encouraged so that money spent in our communities can remain in the community, building economic prosperity. Incentives should be available for businesses to move into low income communities to provide places to buy food, clothing, furniture, and books. In addition, parks, childcare centers, hospitals, banks, libraries, and places of worship should be reasonably close by.
- Prejudice and discrimination based on race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and nation of origin, still need to be recognized and eliminated.
- There should be opportunities for young people to participate and take leadership roles in their communities.
The solutions do not only lie in better policies and resources. All members of our communities have responsibility to help rebuild our dilapidated communities, contribute to their healing, and improve the quality of life within them. Mobilizing residents to get involved, to fix things themselves, is part of any good revitalization strategy. As they say where we come from, “The quickest way to get on your feet is to get off your butt.”
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Respect for Young People
Young people deserve to be respected. We are intelligent and have a lot to contribute. Young people want to be included, and want our ideas and input to be taken seriously and used to make a positive difference. We want to directly participate in all decisions that affect our lives.
Young people have a desire to give back. One of the reasons students embrace YouthBuild is because we get to make a difference. We give back by building permanent housing for homeless, as well as hosting activities for the elderly, providing food for hungry people, assisting victims of AIDS or other illnesses, and mentoring younger youth.
YouthBuild teaches its students that leadership is taking responsibility to make things go right in our lives, our families, and our communities. Being invited to take a leadership role is a high level of respect that gives us a high level of responsibility. It gives us a sense of pride and satisfaction in giving back to our communities.
We propose that every institution that affects and works with young people have significant input from young people. Families, schools, after-school programs, group homes, juvenile justice residential programs, job training programs, and summer camps: all would be improved if young people had a real voice in their policies, programs, and selection of personnel.
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The Justice System
Crime and violence fill our communities with fear. We have said in other sections of this Declaration that education and employment, good parenting and child care, collective community responsibility, and the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse are the keys to crime prevention.
We also believe that social programs that get young people off the street and engaged in meaningful activities are effective crime prevention as well as indirect supports to the school system.
In addition to the fear of crime itself, some of our communities experience fear of the corruption, brutality, and discrimination by police who are supposed to be there to protect us. Steps need to be taken to effectively monitor the police. There needs to be communication between the community, youth, and the police to solve problems together. We understand that many police are, themselves, afraid. Police departments should build relationships by sponsoring events and activities to build community— they can host block parties and athletic programs, visit schools for discussions not just arrests, and hold community meetings.
If crimes are committed and individuals incarcerated, the prison experience should be designed to rehabilitate. It is the society’s responsibility to ensure that prisoners who have served their time have the tools needed to effectively transition from an institutionalized mentality to one where they face constant choices.
We believe that people who have committed crimes and paid their dues should have a second chance for education, training, and employment. Re-entry programs like YouthBuild should be available. Having offenders return to their communities with no access to education and employment is a recipe for more crime.
Convicted felons who have demonstrated a commitment to a positive life style should be granted the right to vote. Information about how to reclaim voting rights should be widely available. Furthermore, offenders should not be permanently denied access to other publicly funded benefits like housing and scholarships for higher education. People convicted of drug charges lose more opportunities for government services (such as TANF, Section 8, and college scholarships) than rapists, child molesters, and murderers. This unfair and illogical policy should be changed.
The huge investment in prisons that our nation has made is frightening to us, especially coupled with the failure of our public schools and the absence of a plan to invest fully in education and training.
We are aware that young people of color receive relatively heavier penalties for certain crimes. Inconsistencies associated with racial or class background in the severity of punishment for comparable crimes should be eliminated.
We have noticed that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that eliminated slavery says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,” shall be allowed, “except as punishment for a crime.” The fact that over 100,000 inmates are being rented out by for-profit prisons to for-profit corporations makes us worry that there may be an economic motivation influencing excessive imprisonment of young adults for minor crimes.
We are also aware that during our lifetimes the gap between rich and poor has widened, despite our national prosperity, and the concentration of wealth among the richest people has increased. These are the wrong directions for a nation committed to justice and opportunity for all.
Our position is that education, family supports, employment, community economic development, youth involvement, environmental protection, and personal and collective responsibility are the central building blocks to diminishing crime. Providing these positive investments would diminish the resources needed by courts, prisons, probation systems, private security, and police.
Protecting the Planet and Our Environment
Ten years ago we weren’t worried about the planet, but now we are. We have learned that the planet is in danger, and that urgent reform is needed to avoid drastic changes affecting all people. In addition, there are special problems in our communities.
A disproportionately large number of health and environmental risks are cast upon peoples who live in low economic communities These neglected and underserved communities are unjustly weighed down by environmental burdens, some of which include significant lack of green space, poisoned and inaccessible rivers, and exposure to an inordinate amount of industrial pollution which causes high asthma rates and mental health problems.
To improve the environment, and create healthy sustainable communities, young leaders must hold elected officials accountable to address environmental issues locally, nationally, and globally. Particular policies we need include:
- Eliminate brown fields and replace them with more trees and green spaces
- Improve air and water quality in low income communities
- Hold community training sessions on how to keep your community green and energy-efficient
- Build green in all new construction and all rehabilitation
- Create service programs in schools to plant trees and build green parks
- Have more farmers’ markets in low income communities
The Need for Action
It will take the participation of leaders, elected officials of both parties, and policy makers in different fields to improve the living conditions of hundreds of millions of low income families and youth inhabiting the world. We hope you will use your influence to move a big agenda for diminishing poverty and despair, for educating and welcoming all children and youth, for protecting our planet to save our collective home. We will do our part. We are inter-dependent.
Community development and social change begins with personal development. We are committed to continuing to improve ourselves. We are also organizing YouthBuild alumni to stay involved: as block captains, mentors, coaches, members of the local PTAs, liaisons with the police, volunteers in hospices, foster parents, and candidates for office.
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In Closing
We have learned to love ourselves and each other. Now we are concerned for future generations. We care about our children, the ones that are already here and the ones that are yet to come. We believe that the only way to truly change society for the better is through the power of love, compassion, and acceptance, coupled with education and accountability. We aim to continually prove to younger generations that they can be anything they want to be.
We see no reason why this wealthy country cannot find the means to make sure that every child and every parent get the opportunities they need to fulfill their potential and accomplish their goals in life.
We have watched our parents and grandparents play by the rules, work hard, and still end up financially unable to support their families. We don’t want this cycle of poverty to continue. If we work hard, maintain a positive attitude, and give back to our communities, we have the right to share in America’s prosperity.
We want to help create the “Transformation Generation,” to build a great movement to make sure that America offers real opportunity to all her people, in every community. At the same time, we want to help our own communities get organized to take responsibility for their own future well-being.
As current and future community leaders, we are anxious to work hand in hand with all levels of government, business, non-profits, religious organizations and local community residents to transform our communities and our nation as we have transformed our own lives.
We aim to join with others to lift up our voices, to influence our elected officials, to speak to the press, to make it clear that young people have a vision for a society in which there is responsibility and opportunity for all, and freedom and justice and love for every man, woman, and child.
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