The field and approach
of youth development narrowly define it is generally moves around the broader
perspective of development. Youth development as a field or approach is defined
narrowly, which eliminates those surrounding, locality or neighborhood in which
youth develop and learn. Many literatures identify different kind of approach
and model for youth development, but in the field of practice, the youth
development is largely identified in two types of settings, such as “activities
offered by community based organization serving youth during gap periods, and
add on or insertion programs in school, evenings, weekends and summers” (edited
Benson and Pittman, page 293). There are three basic approaches, which are
widely recognized as milestone of youth development. However, every approach is
not free from its own weaknesses and strengths.
Prevention Approaches:
This is generally
believed that youth are high risk individual and they show various symptoms of
problems. The preventive approach reduces risk factors and enhances the
protective factors in the society. In building youth program under this
approach, youth is target as risky group and they are bound to create problem
in future. To prevent them from creating future problem, there is need to
prevent them by enhancing their skill or competencies to cope with the stress
or challenge that may result in future problems (Durlak, 1997).
In the contemporary
period, the prevention approach emphasizes on building ecosystem, which effects
youth day to day life and motivate them to take decision. Therefore, this
approach shows that youth problem should be evaluated on the basis of multiple
settings, where family, community, neighborhood, peers group, school etc. The
limitation of this approach is that it defines youth in ‘what is wrong with
youth rather than what is right’. The application of this approach often leads to ‘identification,
labeling and stigmatizing of youth, their families and their communities’.
Resilience Approach
This approach emphasizes
on developing various initiatives which enable youth to deal with the stressful
situation effectively. This is also known as target oriented approach in youth
development. The approach identifies disadvantage youths and foster resilience
among them. In broader perspective, the approach focus on strengthening social
institutions, such as family, community where disadvantage youth live and spend
most of their time. Generally,
resilience develops in youth when they have healthy and effective interaction
between internal and external factors or agents. The main critic of this
approach is that it’s involved those youth who have minimum level of
understanding about the external situation. A resilient individual is a
combined effort of one’s personal characteristics and accessibility of social
protective environment and support for one’s struggle.
Positive Youth Development Approach
This approach
differentiates youth from ‘risk paradigm’ to ‘youth as asset’ paradigm. The
significant aspect of this approach is that it recognizes ‘the existence of
adversities and development challenges that may affects individual in various
ways, it resist conceiving of the development process mainly as an effort to
overcome deficit and risk’. In this approach, a youth is identified as active
partner in the relationship with community and enable them to share one’s
rights and responsibilities. The positive youth development approach is based
on some basic assumptions, which as follows,
·
Helping
youth achieve their full potential is the best way to prevent them from
experiencing problems
·
Youth
need to experience a set of supports and opportunities to succeed
·
Communities
need to mobilize and build capacity to support the positive youth development
of youth
·
Youth
should not be viewed as problem to be fixed but as partner to be engaged and
developed
These basic three youth
development approach is quite prevalent in most of the youth development
initiatives at macro and micro level. The failure and success of these
approaches are dependent upon the framework and institutional mechanism, which
inspire and involve youth in meaningful ways. At global level, since the
declaration of “International Youth Year” in 1985 and 2010, a range of policies
addressing the issue of youth have been formulated, implemented and evolved by multilateral
agencies and governments. How far these policies and programs have been able to
address the issue of youth in their respective countries, is a matter of
inquiry and research. But, the basic understanding shows that youth are born
and brought in family and its neighborhood, in this situation the influence of
social factors play vital role in shaping the youth identity in significant ways.
In India, the First
Youth Policy in India was declared in 1988 after the success of Asiad Games in
Delhi in 1982. However, a comprehensive youth policy at national level was
introduced in 1993. Even at the policy level, the youth development still means
that a youth, who is obedient to the family members, don’t raise voice in front
of elder, respects everyone and a submissive personality of youth is true
Indian face of youth. The basic approach to develop youth as a web of
responsible well being needs a close coordination with capabilities, livelihood
security, equity and sustainability. The youth policy does not emphasis on
establishing this coordination to develop youth as critical human resources to
change themselves and to accelerate social change in the Indian society.
Why there is need to
build synergy between community based organization at micro level and
government at macro level for involving youth development as core agenda? For
answering this question, this is important to recognize that working with youth
requires a different kind of strategy, synergy as well as a long term approach.
Normally, a youth
development program symbolizes youth as ‘delinquent’ or ‘immature’, therefore,
many preventive measures, pre determined value based activities, such as
teaching promoting discipline; promoting good behavior, involving educational
inputs etc are incorporated in the program. The absence of strong tie between
the youth development program and ‘what actually happens in the daily life of
youth’ not able to produce effective results. Youth development is not an
approach but a process, where identification of ‘goal and methods, ends and
means’ is intertwined.
