Positive youth development and fostering change: The importance of centering youth contribution

Ever since I got involved in community advocacy at the age of fourteen, I have been searching for ways to make a contribution to the world around me. I tried time and time again to get involved in “youth-centered” change-making programs, but often left these experiences feeling that my voice was not being valued — that I was just a young person for organizations to symbolically work with as they declined to incorporate youth perspectives. This past spring, as I prepared to enter my senior year of college, I found myself reflecting on these experiences, disheartened that they still left me unsure of what I could do with my life that would allow me to make a difference.

Then I was hired by the Gardner Center to co-facilitate a summer 2025 Youth Action Research Fellowship in partnership with the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation (HCF). From the outset, I was inspired by the program's design, in which the fellows would research their own communities; by the Gardner Center’s passion for enabling them with the tools to do so; and especially by HCF’s commitment to listen to and act on the input they received. The fellowship took place because HCF was looking for ways to improve its college access programs, and knew it needed the perspectives of Hawaiʻi youth. Given the lack of contribution centered in my own experiences, I was inspired by this, as it is not often that organizations are ready to truly listen to youth and implement change based on their input.

Contribution in context

As I collaborated on this fellowship, I began to see a solution to a problem that I had long been familiar with, but had been unable to articulate: 

Although youth have deep understandings about their communities and want to be involved in contributing to them, contribution-centered youth development opportunities are often lacking in depth or missing entirely, leading youth to feel lost about how to impact the world around them. 

Based on my own experiences and my observations working on this fellowship, it is clear that organizations must center youth contribution if they are interested in providing meaningful development opportunities for young people. 

As I stepped into my role this summer, I read a piece by one of the Gardner Center's deputy directors Kristin Geiser, who co-authored an article elaborating on the 5 "C’s" of youth development: competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring. In this article, the authors posit that a sixth “C,” contribution, should be considered a means, rather than an end, to this development. Analyzing Oakland’s Peers Advising Students to Succeed (PASS-2) program, they found that there are clear results when contribution is “at the center of efforts to transform both youth and their schools:” broad and equitable youth participation, authentic and reflective leadership, and youth development across the other 5 C’s. 

Additionally, they highlighted that youth contribution goes hand-in-hand with systemic change, stating that “positive youth development and systemic change … can both be cultivated through a coherent strategy that begins rather than ends with a focus on youth contribution.” While these findings initially resonated with me due to my own experiences, this summer’s HCF fellowship allowed me to see the importance of contribution being centered in youth development opportunities — this time, from a slightly different perspective. 

During our first fellowship meeting in late May, the fellows were certainly engaged as we discussed our fellowship’s goals and the basics of our research. However, the second session was a pivotal point for this summer’s project, as two leaders from HCF’s education team joined to speak to the fellows about the "why" behind their work. HCF articulated that the fellows’ contributions were essential to this project, and that HCF was prepared to make real change based on their research, findings, and recommendations. HCF representatives made it clear that the fellows were uniquely positioned for this work — our cohort had all gone to high school in Hawaiʻi, had completed at least one year of college, and had a variety of lived experiences. Thus, the fellows had unique and important perspectives that would enable them to best guide the research process and interpret the data. 

As this conversation occurred, I watched the fellows light up — the way that HCF articulated the fellows’ importance to the research and that their contributions would make a real difference to their communities seemed to ignite something in them.

How youth and organizations win

The students' post-fellowship reflections confirmed what I saw during that session. When asked about the importance of contribution to this research, fellows shared a number of thoughtful responses. For one fellow, “centering contribution was [their] initial reason for joining the fellowship;” they noted that “each and every fellow had a passion for contributing to [their] respective communities.” Another fellow, who “initially joined the fellowship for monetary needs” and research themes that “[aligned] with [their] expertise and interest,” grew to feel empowered by seeing others “from [their] own community wanting to make a positive impact.” 

For at least two of the fellows, “knowing [they] were contributing to [their] community helped [them] to continue pushing forward” through the challenges of the fellowship. One fellow stated that the opportunity to make recommendations that would support other students in the future “made [them] really happy and hopeful.” Overall, responses to the survey demonstrated that centering contribution was key to the fellows’ passion about the project, which allowed them to engage more deeply in the work. 

I want community organizations, schools, and researchers to understand how important it is to intentionally engage youth in contribution-centered development opportunities. When youth development opportunities are designed with contribution at the core, both youth and organizations win — young people are more connected to the opportunity and to their own development, and organizations are positioned to truly foster both youth development and systemic change. 

Young people deserve opportunities in which their voices will be heard, and we need to be ready to incorporate their perspectives now more than ever. 

Photo: Lily Mobraaten (top row, second from left) is joined by the student fellows participating in the HCF Youth Action Research Fellowship; the group met twice a week over Zoom throughout the summer.