What We Do
Building Partnerships for Youth focuses on three essential strategies designed to help build the capacity of organizations working with and on behalf of young people—to help ensure that all youth ages 9-13 years old have the opportunities and experiences to arm them with the tools to make healthy choices, including abstinence.
We encourage and support the development of multi-sector state collaboratives comprised of representatives of state government, local youth, faith community, voluntary organizations, health, and education. These teams jointly work to infuse positive youth development principles across sectors, through development of action plans that include offering at least one professional development opportunity to encourage additional linkages and networking to expand incorporation of PYD principles into youth programming and policy development.
We leverage and disseminate research-based youth development resources to support organizations and individuals in their work to encourage the development of individual youth assets. Key highlights include the program self-assessment, a tool to gage a program’s level of integration of each of the 21 elements of positive youth development, and a searchable database of evidence-based program models and curricula.
We facilitate linkages among a variety of organizations and sectors interested in integrating youth development concepts into abstinence education, and forming collaborative efforts to develop more positive environments for young people. Working with the National Initiative to Improve Adolescent Health by the Year 2010, Extension professionals throughout the nation, we’re working to build an infrastructure to support healthy futures for all youth.
