The YouthBuild Academy holds several Transformation Institutes annually for directors, staff, teachers, counselors, policy-makers, and funders from the youth development, youth leadership, youth employment, after-school, and education arenas. Each Institute offers 10-12 multi-day training courses drawn from the Academy’s quality, field-tested menu below. Individualized fee-for-service trainings are also available to organizations. The Academy workshops are described below. See our Events page for the upcoming schedule of Academy events.
Youth Leadership
- Leadership Development in Youth Work: A Key Pathway for Youth Development and Social Change
Learn the basics of promoting youth leadership from YouthBuild’s 25 years of experience engaging young people in decision-making and leadership skill building—a dynamic, experiential, and practical workshop.
- Involving Youth in Decision-Making
Learn a hands-on, practical, and proven method of setting up, training, and facilitating youth involvement in program governance.
- Blueprint for Democracy
Craft lessons plans to teach students about social issues, overcome their doubts and cynicism, and develop action ideas about social issues by using the “YouthBuild USA Blueprint for Democracy” curriculum designed to help teachers and leadership development staff connect students with democracy.
- Youth on Board 14 Points Seminar
Get concrete tips and guidelines on how to create empowering environments for young people. Utilizing interactive activities and individual’s own experiences and belief system as a foundation, participants examine attitudes and expectations of young people. We use small group action-planning, one-on-one discussions, and team-building exercises to explore how to successfully involve young people in decision making.
Youth Development and Counseling
- Creating an Effective Counseling Approach
Learn assessment methods, use of case management, life planning, individual and group counseling, role of counselor with other staff, and supervision to create an effective counseling program. Develop greater clinical knowledge of issues young people encounter and connect counseling of youth to program success.
- Stages of Youth Transformation at YouthBuild
Structure your program to support the personal change process of a YouthBuild student. Based on research studies, learn how to build your program to reinforce each development phase: trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, and new identity formation. (YouthBuild-specific, but relevant to many youth programs)
- Handling Difficult Emotions
Discover proven techniques that can assist staff and young people to better handle stress, low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, and negative influences.
- Peer Counseling
Learn and practice the primary tools of peer counseling: the power of attention, effective listening, building safety, handling feelings, appreciating people, and leading support groups. Learn to set up peer counseling in your youth program to help youth effectively help each other.
Education and Learning
- Creating a Positive School Culture
Practice proven methods for turning school institutions into learning communities through dialogue and building mutually respectful youth-adult partnerships.
- Managing for Educational Excellence
Create a learning environment that accelerates educational outcomes by focusing on three areas: professional development for teachers, support for alternative teaching strategies, and technology for learning.
- Classroom Management and Discipline
Learn about proven practices of classroom management and student-centered teachings that examine a range of approaches to discipline.
- Project-based Curriculum Development
Learn the theoretical framework of project-based learning and understand its application. Work on a team to design a project-based learning exercise, understand how to use project-based learning for GED instruction, and discover how to use project-based learning to build teams in the classroom.
- Quantum Learning for Teachers ®
Experience this exciting and powerful teaching and learning methodology based on 20 years of brain research, adult learning theory—proven, practical, and enjoyable.
Meaningful Worklife
- Preparing Young People for Economic Independence
Acquire the skills to assist young people to move forward toward self-sufficiency: establishing and repairing credit, saving and managing money, asset development, first-time home buying, and financial planning.
- Youth Culture Competence
Learn effective strategies for recruiting and engaging youth to prepare for labor market success. Learn proven ways to engage young people through use of youth popular culture and positive peer pressure.
Healthy Living
- Re-entry and Re-engagment
Learn ways of engaging adjudicated youth in three main areas of growth critical for their success: work and life skills, independent living, and leadership engagement. The program is based on YouthBuild’s experience in which recidivism rates for adjudicated graduates is only 15 percent compared with 49 percent for adjudicated youth in general.
- Stress for Success
Learn science-based, integrated approached for expanding one’s capacity to handle stress, including: managing the ABCs of stress, dealing with the mind, training the body, creating empowering rituals, and recovering from stress.
- Substance Abuse and Counseling
Become familiar with the signs and symptoms of abuse and the strategies for dealing with addiction and substance abuse in young people, one of the key causes of participant failure and low programs retention and attendance.
Diversity
- Diversity Leadership: Healing & Dealing
Explore how cultural competency is core for youth workers in facilitating positive youth development. Take a pro-active approach to healing the internal issues and dealing with external behavior change, individually and programmatically.
- Building Effective Youth-Adult Relationships Through Understanding Adultism
Learn how to counteract the key obstacle to youth leadership development by building more effective positive youth/adult partnerships.
- Managing Staff Diversity
Learn to be pro-active about the diversity issues that are live among your staff. Treat diversity as an organizational asset. Practice proven methods to help staff do their own diversity work in order to more effectively help the young people do diversity work.
The above six categories of trainings are broad areas of individual youth development. In the field of youth work, however, these take place in an organizational setting. Therefore, the Academy offers trainings on various aspects of building transformational organizations and programs.
Organization Building
- Managing for Youth Transformation
Learn conceptual frameworks and practical management skills that help create the environment for success: planning for youth development outcomes, facilitating adult/youth communication, working through conflict, examining approaches to discipline, and developing effective staff teams.
- Creating Fundraising Strategies That Lead to Sustainable Results
Knowing the key tools to ongoing organizational sustainability, success, and ultimately, transformation, relies on establishing a resource development methods that combines organizational self-assessment; clear program success measures; productive Board roles and responsibilities, and mutually-beneficial community relationships. This workshop focuses on building strategic fundraising and resource development approaches that facilitate organizational stability and sustainability.
- Building a Strong, Unified Team
Learn to cultivate and maintain a cohesive staff team. Through discussion, role-plays, personal assessment and readings, this workshop examines hiring, staff orientation, supervision, professional development, and coaching; and teaches communication, meeting management, and effective group facilitation.
- Managing Board, Host Agency, and Director Relationships at a YouthBuild Program
Managing relationships among Director, Executive Director, and Board Chair. Includes an orientation to the history, philosophy, and long-range mission of YouthBuild; highlights the successes and potential difficulties of YouthBuild and host agencies. (YouthBuild-specific, but relevant to many youth programs)
- Effective Fundraising and Proposal Writing
Learn the complex skills needed to win grants: researching, developing relationships, strategic planning, cultivating support, time management strategies and suggestions for impressive design and packaging. Identify appropriate private-sector grant makers, approach and cultivate a funding source, and organize and writing a proposal.
- Coaching Edge ®
Learn this breakthrough approach to set-up, conduct, and manage coaching conversations for a positive impact on both colleagues and youth participants.
- Facilitative Leadership ®
Tap the power of participation by exploring unique facilitation techniques that view leaders as change agents who respect and value the diversity of individuals and know how to share power and decision-making.
- Financial Management for Organizational Success
Take an in-depth, hands-on look at fiscal controls, budgeting, financial statements and audits, accepting software, tracking multiple funding sources, federal forms, fund accounting theory, cash flow statement, cost allocation, and financial statement analysis.
Transformational Program Design and Culture
- Fundamentals of YouthBuild
For staff new to YouthBuild, learn about the history of YouthBuild, graduate outcomes, key qualities for success, and the centrality of leadership development. Learn how to set up and successfully integrate leadership development into the components of education, construction, counseling, and graduate opportunities. (YouthBuild-specific, but relevant to many youth programs)
- Mental Toughness—Youth Orientation
Experience this demanding, rigorous, and caring immersion program utilizing physical, mental, and emotional challenges to facilitate the transition of youth from street culture to a program culture of accountability, possibility, and high expectations.
- Program Conditions for Transformation: Strategies for High Attendance & Retention
Unpack the program conditions that promote transformation through high attendance and retention emphasizing a strong program culture, positive relationships, opportunities for leadership and service, concrete services, and clear pathways to a brighter future.
- YouthBuild Construction Staff as Teachers and Counselors
Build young people as they learn how to build houses! Learn how to hire and build effective staff teams, understand a theory of human development and growth, and develop a practical, holistic method for supporting young people. (YouthBuild-specific, but relevant to many youth programs)
- Green Building
Join in the movement to create green or sustainable building and energy-efficiency. This course explores the basics of green building while participant’s experiment in a hand-on activity to deepen understanding. Learn the myriad benefits of sustainable building, including a higher quality of energy efficient homes and a greater emphasis on protecting our environment.
- Managing a Cost-Efficient YouthBuild Construction Site
Identify and discuss key construction component issues. Identify the roles programs play in doing construction projects. Learn strategies to gain control of the construction production and training process. (YouthBuild-specific.)
- Youth Program Graduates on Staff—Making It Work
Learn from experienced YouthBuild directors how to set graduates up for success, manage that critical transition from participant to staff, provide ongoing professional development and supportive supervision, and encourage their continued leadership. (YouthBuild-specific, but relevant to other youth programs.)
|
