Youth FACE IT (Fostering Active Community Engagement for Integration and Transformation) is an interdisciplinary program created in 2008 by researchers at the Children, Youth and Environments Center for Research and Design (CYE). It provides opportunities for university students to work directly with multicultural high-school youth to reflect on their experiences in the community and identify recommendations for community change.
Boulder County youth care about their communities and want change. However, they often feel their communities are not listening or do not care. Although many communities in Boulder County have youth advisory boards, most youth are not asked to share their ideas and, therefore, remain unheard. In order to create more youth-friendly communities it is critical to reach out to all youth.
In Spring 2009, sixty high-school youth took on a semester long project to make their community more youth friendly by sharing their experiences through digital stories they created in collaboration with 14 undergraduate students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Digital story themes include: what youth want in their community; experiences of teen moms in Boulder County; how young people are engaged in their community and the engagement opportunities they want; and how educational experiences in our community impact youth.
For more information, contact:
Debra Flanders Cushing, PhD Student and Instructor
College of Architecture and Planning
University of Colorado
debbieflanders@yahoo.com
303.475.0763
Emily Wexler Love, PhD Candidate and Instructor
School of Education
University of Colorado
Emilylovecu@gmail.com
303.868.7641