The Youth Arts and Music Center Initiative is a community-wide effort to design and build an arts center in East Palo Alto. The six-year process, supported by the Goldman Foundation, centered on youth leadership and the arts, and engaged a cross-sector collaborative of partner organizations in an attempt to address the city's shortage of existing…

Digital media play an increasingly dominant role in reinforcing and challenging power inequality in social and institutional relationships. This paper describes how a service-learning component engaged students in community-based interactions that not only deepened their understanding of course content but also increased their commitment to…

This report analyzes case studies of "more and better learning time" efforts around the country. With support from the Ford Foundation, America's Promise Alliance looked in Grand Rapids, MI; Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN; and Rochester, NY to see how time spent out of the classroom improved outcomes for students in low-income neighborhoods…

Background: Due to the rising demands for a Canadian workforce with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-related education, there is a need to increase youth engagement in STEM education and programming. Research, however, has shown that youth residing in low-income communities are disproportionately affected by psychosocial barriers,…

Using Kotter's model of change as a framework, this case study will describe the structure and efforts of a centralized unit within an urban, research university to deepen and extend the institutionalization of community engagement. The change model will be described along with details about the implemented strategies and practices that fall…

The Community Science Workshops (CSWs)--with funding from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation--created a network among the CSW sites in California. The goals of the CSW Network project have been to improve programs, build capacity throughout the Network, and establish new sites. Inverness Research has been…

Although youth have long been at the forefront of social change, the last two decades have seen an upsurge in the number of organizations, agencies, and governmental bodies dedicated to supporting the idea of youth voice in public policy. Drawing on in-depth individual interviews with 32 youth in one major urban center, this study compares how…

Although research on minority youth has established the value of coethnic spaces for safe ethnic identity exploration, research has seldom examined how youth in these spaces draw ethnic boundaries or offered appropriate frameworks addressing boundary-setting. This study uses Berry's acculturation framework to explore ethnic boundary-setting within…

In 2004, the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change emphasized the need for a comprehensive base of information on the effectiveness of community collaborations for youth--an accessible, evidence-rich resource that could guide local efforts to bring about meaningful change. Nearly 10 years later, this need remains largely unmet. In…

Recent attention to youth activism for school reform reveals positive student outcomes. Yet educators may object to the use of social actions in schools, diminishing opportunities for these benefits to accrue. This paper analyzes educators' conceptions about the proper exercise of student voice within schools and how these coincide with…

In this paper, we critically reflect, through the lens of liberation psychology, on our experiences of using participative community arts in work with young people and intergenerational groups in inner-city Manchester, UK. We used mixed methods to examine the impact of and engagement with community arts in two projects. One study was quasi…

Research demonstrates that involvement in high-quality youth programs benefits young people personally, socially, and academically. Yet many families--particularly low-income and minority families--are unsatisfied with the quality, affordability, and availability of options in their communities. Participation rates are especially low for youth who…

This article discusses social innovation in education informed by arts-based and Indigenous ways of knowing. I use the term Indigenous to refer to First Peoples' and their wisdom traditions from places around the world and the term Aboriginal to refer to the diverse First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples of Canada. The article looks at the…

Purpose: This exploratory case study examines how school systems and other local organizations have been working within two major U.S. cities to improve high school graduation rates. Systematically assessing active interorganizational dropout prevention networks may reveal characteristics affecting communities' capacity to support school…

The focus of this study is direct marketing of produce from an urban market garden. Rather than discussing broad issues of direct marketing, we use a case study to frame the decisions a market gardener is likely to face in developing both production and marketing plans. The garden featured in this study is located in Seattle, Washington, a city…