What is YDEV?
Youth Development is a collaborative effort of working with youth to improve their social, emotional, and developmental skills. Often times this collaborative effort takes place outside of school hours for example an after school program, or community based program. Youth Development has been around for a very long time, but it's identity has changed over time. Today there are three ideologies that a Youth Development space can be. Those are Risk and Resiliency, Positive Youth Development, and Critical Youth Development. A Youth Development space can be more than one of these ideologies but most of the time there is a focus on just one of them. What's so special about Youth Development is that it is a very different approach to working with youth than a typical school or academic program. Youth Spaces usually focus on strength-based approaches and putting the youth's needs first instead of just "fixing the problem".
Of course the titled caught my eye! Totally agree and love how you described ydev as a different approach to working with youth!
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