Just as we adults are processing the White House’s actions since the presidential inauguration, so too are our children. For those of us with young people in our lives — educators, parents, grandparents, and youth-serving professionals of all types — making sense of these developments means simultaneously working through our own reactions while helping our kids to do the same.
For teachers and principals, that may mean making a plan for how to handle ICE raids at your school while trying to ensure that your students feel safe enough to learn. For parents, it may mean having difficult conversations with your children about difference and intolerance, and making sense of hateful rhetoric that now regularly comes from the highest level of our government. For youth workers, coaches, and mentors, it may mean fervently reinforcing core values of compassion, inclusion, and love of neighbor — even during threatened attacks on nonprofits, public education, and the people we serve.
For funders, it should mean supporting young people to productively contend with this moment. The extent to which we prioritize meaningful youth engagement in civic and community discourse will either help to build resilience, connection, and positive association with democracy, or lead to further disconnection and decreased civic preparedness.
This begins with funding schools, enrichment providers, community-based organizations, and career and workforce programs to meet young people where they are. Invest in the capacity of caring adults to listen to young people, build trust and solidarity across lines of perceived difference, and create opportunities to take action in the spirit of service and mutual aid.
It is of course far easier to pretend that young people aren’t affected or engaging in the same difficult conversations that we are in their own spaces. We adults are quite adept at conveniently disregarding how youth are experiencing the world, even in the institutions designed to serve them. In doing so, we often promulgate the old stereotypes of youth indifference, discontent, and indifference — and convenience ourselves by avoiding hearing the things that might make us uncomfortable. We mostly expect young people to figure it out on their own — or not. After all, isn’t that what so many of us had to do when we were coming of age?
However, the benefits of listening systematically to youth should far outweigh our own discomfort of inconvenience. When we listen with the honor, intent, and trust that young people deserve, we open organizations to the possibilities that accompany better data, deeper insights, and a more generative relationships with the immense talents of our youth. We are reminded of the ways in which they bring people together, serve their neighbors, and use their voices to promote the common good.
Funders can use their decision-making power to help adults and young people do more of the same, even when they’ve committed themselves to a different or more narrow set of philanthropic priorities. Whether focusing on academic preparedness, market-value credentialing, economic mobility, or arts and culture, funders can affirm every space where young people show up as an opportunity for youth engagement.
So, regardless of where you fund, don’t leave youth voices out of the conversation: Ask your grantees about how young people engage with difference and belonging. Learn about what they need to create opportunities for youth within their programs and within their communities. Inquire about what youth leadership is looking like in this moment and share your findings with your networks.
At YouthTruth, we’re privileged to partner with hundreds of school and district leaders each year who prioritize deeply understanding what their students are experiencing. They’re systematically asking thoughtful, evidence-based questions, taking seriously what they hear, and using the information to make improvements in their schools. This systematic approach is exactly what we need more of: adults creating spaces that affirms kids’ agency and voice over their daily experiences. That can make a huge difference for just one kid; and it holds the power to help prepare millions of kids for community participation, democratic engagement, and active citizenship.
Critically, the difficult work of systematically listening to young people need not be understood through a politicized lens. Creating opportunities that enable kids to share what they are experiencing is fundamental to helping them, even if it means feeling our own vulnerabilities or risking the sense that we have it all figured out. This is as true for kids in red-voting zip codes as it is in blue ones. It holds true for kids who speak many languages or just one. It is a truth that transcends any demographic category of identity.
We are all processing our response to this moment in history. Let us not be tone deaf to the experiences and voices of young people but instead use this moment to support long-term resilience and rebuild the foundation for the kind of society young people deserve to inherit.
David McKinney is vice president of YouthTruth. Find him on LinkedIn.
