At ITI and Indiana SADD, we believe youth have the power to create meaningful, healthy change in their communities. We know that empowering youth goes beyond simply giving them a seat at the table. That’s why we adhere to the ITI Empowerment Model, a simple framework that prioritizes youth engagement, capacity building, and creating meaningful opportunities for youth to take action.
The Empowerment Model helps us ensure that young people are engaged as active agents in their development and the world around them, not merely as participants or objects of programs. The model consists of two essential components: building capacity and providing meaningful opportunities for action. These components create a dynamic pathway for young people to contribute, learn, and grow when used together.
✨Capacity Building: Equipping Youth for Success
Capacity building provides young people with the tools, skills, and desire to make informed decisions and take ownership of their actions. It gives youth the training and resources necessary to lead and succeed. Whether learning how to advocate for safer schools, becoming a peer educator on substance misuse prevention, or gaining public speaking skills, capacity building is the foundation for youth empowerment.
Without this strong foundation, well-meaning adults often thrust young people into leadership positions without the knowledge or confidence to make a lasting impact. A commitment to capacity building ensures that we have helped prepare youth to seize opportunities with confidence and competence when opportunities arise.
✨Meaningful Opportunities: Taking Action, Not Just Talking
But building capacity is only half the story. The model stresses that youth need meaningful opportunities to apply their learning. Too often, young people are invited into decision-making spaces only to find their role is symbolic, with little real power to effect change. This kind of token involvement fails to empower youth and can disillusion them.
The Empowerment Model flips this narrative. It emphasizes that inviting youth to be involved is not enough—we must empower youth to act. By providing SADD members with meaningful opportunities to use their skills and make decisions, we help cultivate the next generation of engaged, empowered leaders.
✨Youth as Leaders, Not Objects or Recipients
A vital tenet of the Empowerment Model is rejecting youth as passive recipients of adult-driven programs. When we place youth at the center of the process, we respect them as partners. Healthy youth-adult partnerships result in more profound levels of engagement by young people and encourage them to see themselves as leaders with the potential to shape their futures.
ITI and Indiana SADD are committed to creating a culture where involving youth in leadership roles is encouraged and expected. By giving our members the tools and opportunities to lead, we help them become changemakers in their schools, communities, and beyond.
📢 Let’s make empowerment more than a buzzword—by equipping our young leaders with both the capacity and the opportunity to act, shifting the narrative from youth as objects and recipients to youth as powerful agents of change.
Comentarios