EMPOWERING YOUNG PEOPLE TO CONNECT, COLLABORATE, & TAKE ACTION

- David Keyes, City of Seattle- Chris Tugwell, YMCA of Greater Seattle

AGENDA

- Introductions

- Icebreaker

- Project overview

- Group discussion

- Questions

- Evaluation

How do youth get heard?

GOAL – YOUTH DIGITAL COMMONS

City

• Learn to do effective electronic civic engagement

• Support youth engagement & tech literacy

• Bring government to youth

• Comcast grant negotiated in franchising

YMCA

• Youth empowerment

• Engage in emerging trends

UW Center for Communication

• Civics: Becoming Citizens support

• Civic engagement research

VISION & PROGRESSION - TECHNOLOGY

BASIC SOFTWARE SKILLS

Ten Key

Digital Arts

VISION & PROGRESSION - RESEARCH

Related research at -www.engagedyouth.org-www.ccce.com.washington.edu-Newer partnership with Microsoft Research

• Focus groups with 180 youth• Research on other models• Decision to target 13-21• Summer youth design program• Drupal platform built• Lots of dialogue and deliberation!

Leading to...

VISION & PROGRESSION – PugetSoundOff.org

VISION & PROGRESSION – CONTENT GROWS

VISION & PROGRESSION – CURRICULUM

VISION & PROGRESSION – VALUES

"The mission of Puget SoundOff is to provide youth with a forum for discussion, artistic expression, and action as a way to empower and encourage youth to have a strong voice.”

• Let youth drive as much as possible

• Integrate online and offline training

• Needs to fun and connect to causes

• Debate is good

• Has to be multimedia

• Don’t try to compete with Facebook, etc.

• Keep content & conversations public

• Partner with other organizations and schools

• Promote development of speech (incl revised postings)

• Design for diversity of speakers (via partners, tools, training, design/content promotion)

VISION & PROGRESSION – EMPOWERMENT Connect with community, Connect with gov

QUARTER 5

• 125 participated in digital literacy trainings (unduplicated)

• 592 participated in digital literacy trainings (duplicated)

• 1381 total training hours

• Averaged 173 open lab visits/week

• 111 hours of open lab each week

In order to expand and grow capacity of other YMCA branches, nonprofit organizations, classroom teachers, we began running programs, fine tuning and packaging our resources and activities into curriculum guides we call Civic Voice Curriculum programs.

YTECH’s Civic Voice Curriculum programs are project-based, service learning guides that explore community issues.

Young people use digital media to tell stories, share their voice and develop action projects to spark dialogue and initiate change in their communities.

YTech: digital inclusion + civic engagement programs

TODAY – CIVIC VOICE CURRICULUM

TODAY – CIVIC VOICE CURRICULUM

TECH INTEGRATION

RECAP – CIVIC VOICE CURRICULUM

WHAT’S NEXT – ONLINE IMPROVEMENTS

WHAT’S NEXT CURRICULUM

Questions & feedback on CVC curriculum?

If progression of outreach and engagement is:

How do digital natives make most impact? How do we best facilitate people & tech?

• Building awareness • Mobilizing and connecting• Deliberation and development of solutions• Action that impacts decision makers & community• Implementation• Feedback

IMPACT

I’m sorry that I put my family through seeing me smoke, steal and go to jail. This is why I wanted to help with the Night Out, so I could show my little cousin and the younger generation to be good and stay out of trouble.”

-- Yao

“When communities come together to fight for a change it is possible to make a difference when multiple people stand up for what is right.”

-- Marleisha

500 young people served as of 3rd Quarter 2012

MORE THAN 3300 users on PSO.org

GET INVOLVED | JOIN US

Learn more: Visit youthdigitalmedia.com to preview other guides and watch media created using out guides

Run a program: Purchase a curriculum guide by contacting Roni Ayalla, roniayalla@gmail.com Guides are $10 each.

Western Washington & Greater New York City areas: YTech will potentially run a Civic Voice Curriculum program at your organization or train your staff on our curriculum model.

Contact: YMCA | Chris Tugwell | ctugwell@seattleymca.org | 425-445-5860 CITY OF SEATTLE | David Keyes | david.keyes@seattle.gov | 206-386-9759NYC | Roni Ayalla | roniayalla@gmail.com | 206-250-2456

Thank You