Nurturing a Base of Leaders for Youth-Led Interfaith Service-Learning

St. Paul
Developing youth as leaders is a core principle of interfaith service-learning. It is reinforced by best practices in service-learning, asset building, and interfaith engagement.
 
Quality standards for service-learning indicate that youth voice is vital, involving youth as leaders in planning, implementing, and evaluating their experiences, with guidance from adults. This strong youth voice not only ensures that the experiences will be meaningful and relevant for them, but it also teaches them leadership, planning, decision-making, and community-building skills that will last a lifetime.
 

Youth voice and leadership focuses on young people’s ideas, opinions, involvement, and initiative being a primary driver of planning, action, and reflection in interfaith service-learning. Cultivating adult allies to mentor, guide, and support young leaders is also key to leadership development and success.

Benefits of Youth Voice and Leadership

  • Taps into young people’s drive, determination, and practical wisdom for the benefit of the community.
  • Increases youth buy-in, their learning and growth, and the effectiveness of their efforts.
  • Encourages and increases ongoing participation in service-learning by young people.
  • Builds bridges between youth from faith communities and their schools and other community organizations.
  • Increases the opportunities for strengthening developmental assets with youth.

Strategies for Strengthening Youth Voice and Leadership

  • Ensure that meetings are a “safe space” for youth to share their ideas, personalities, and opinions. They are unlikely to step up and contribute if they don’t think they are being taken seriously.
  • Match young people’s leadership roles with their levels of experience, stretching them to grow a bit beyond their comfort zones.
  • Be explicit in articulating roles; otherwise, some adults will step into a vaccuum by default.
  • Assume that young people can take on all aspects of developing and planning your interfaith service-learning program and projects, with appropriate adult support and mentoring. This includes budget management, timelines, learning and growth goals, evaluation, publicity, and other activities. Their roles in these areas—and the level of adult support needed—will vary based on their age and experience.
  • Break down the tasks and responsibilities in the project and program into a wide range of roles. More experienced youth may be ready to oversee several elements; youth who are new to the experience may be best suited to a narrower role that allows them to learn and build their confidence.
  • Provide formal or informal leadership training for young people so that they are more likely to be successful. This can include a mentoring process that progresses as follows: I do, you watch. We do together. You do, I watch. You do on your own.
  • Reflect and debrief with young leaders about their leadership experiences. Use previous experiences, both positive and negative, to help youth develop their skills. Also, use these times to help adult allies learn how they can better support (and stay out of the way of) youth who are developing as strong leaders.
  • Explore a tiered leadership structure over time, allowing young people to "graduate" into more responsibility over time as they mature as leaders.
  • Be patient. No one always gets it right the first or second time when they’re learning new skills, and that will be true as young people learn to be leaders. Give them the time and support they need to be successful.

Cultivating Adult Allies for Interfaith Service-Learning

It’s important to have adults actively involved in planning and leading—to be allies for the young people. Adults can bring important perspectives, knowledge, experience, skills, and connections with them. Not only can they work with young people to accomplish the tasks, but they also build relationships with the young people. Those relationships become the opportunity for building many Developmental Assets. Adult allies include youth workers, parents, teachers, members of different religious institutions, and other community adults. They may be organizational staff, or they may be volunteers.
 
An ally’s formal roles are less important than her or his attitude toward youth. They need to recognize youth as valuable, with rights and responsibilities for contributing to the community. Adults tend to play roles of helping bring people together, cut through bureaucracies, and mentoring youth in overcoming obstacles.
 
Though attitudes toward youth are foundational, it is also important that they have or develop knowledge and skills i helping to facilitate interfaith service-learning. Building their capacity and increasing their sense of competence and confidence will build their commitment to your efforts. Here are some strategies for keeping them supported and engaged in your efforts:

  • Create formal and informal training opportunities to deepen their knowledge and comfort with the key principles and practices of service-learning, interfaith engagement, and asset building. This training can include workshops, one-on-one meetings, mentoring, and other approaches.
  • Design training that addresses all levels of experience. Introduce new allies and volunteers while also attending to renewing and revitalizing the practice of more experienced adult allies.
  • Build in time for reflection about roles, expectations, and experiences.
  • Foster open communication, keeping people are kept well-informed of projects, successes, learning activities, available training, and other matters. If problems or concerns arise, deal with them quickly, honestly, and respectfully.

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