What is youth development?	What is youth development at RIC
Advocating and supporting youth	Social work
Working together	Non profits
Supporting	Education background
Strength based	Standards
Helps with prevention	Internship
Support identity	Building a toolbox
Help youth co-author their life story	Building and supporting community
Help them develop voice	community

Elevator speech:

Youth development helps youth through support and advocating their lives.  Helping them develop a voice along with co-authoring their life stories.  Supporting the youth in finding their identities within themselves as well as in the community and world that they live in.  We work together with them using strength based approaches and support them in their decisions using social work, non profit studies, education background along with an internship through proposed plan to better ones organization  

Resilient Kids

Resilient Kids

"We believe that learning happens when kids are connected, confident and focused."

This quote was one of the quotes on Resilient Kids.  This is an organization that has a mission "to foster the social, emotional and academic growth of children and young people through mindfulness curricula seamlessly integrated into the school culture.  To help reduce stress and behaviors that interfere with learning, to accelerate positive student outcomes."  This is important to the youth because they are not able to build those connections with others anymore.  However with connecting school, culture, career and life youth can get anywhere and it gives them the power to try and achieve more within their lives.

Promising Practices

The Promising Practice Multicultural Conference  focused on Advancing Public Health & Human Rights through Education and Service.  While at this conference the keynote address was by Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott.  The two workshops that I attended were Community Partnerships to Address Disparities in Type 1 Diabetes Care for School-Age Children and Youth Actions for All Abilities.  Being part of the Rhode Island College Youth Development Degree Program I loved the session learning about youth.  This session was lead by the youth through the Rhode Island Department of Health Office of Special Needs.  There was a lot of in site of the youth programs and history including Dare to Dream which is a conference that is for the youth taught by the youth.  It was an amazing conference with lots of different ideas for youth and health information.  

Identity

While reading Identity in Context by Nakkula and Toshalis it spoke about how “our goal is to help educators move beyond an understanding of adolescent identity development and toward constructive ideas for promoting such development through their everyday interactions (pg 17).”

Context mapping is an approach to design in which designers use people’s everyday lives to inform and inspire themselves for ideation.  While thinking about my own context map I had to categorize it by categories such as home, school, work and social. 

Four different identities would be achieved identity, foreclosed identity, moratorium and diffuse identity.  “Foreclosed identity status is one in which an individual has committed to a life direction or way of being without exploring it carefully and without experimenting with alternatives (Nakkula and Toshalis p29)”.  While I was growing up I had a foreclosed identity status when I was choosing what vehicle to drive.  My parents, sisters and relatives have always had a Toyota so when it was time for me to buy a car; I went straight to a Toyota dealership.  No questions asked on the brand of car I was going to get, only idea I pondered was what type.  I went for the Corolla; my new baby and at that point forward I was part of the norm in my family of going with Toyota. 

“Diffuse Identity status is a state in which there has been little exploration or active consideration of a particular identity and no psychological commitment to one” (Nakkula and Toshalis p32).  This is considered to accompany adolescents and how they struggle with emotional problems to identify themselves.