Engaging Children In Activism

A lifetime of teaching children, youth, and adults about social change has taught me that all young people have innate and unique voices that want to be expressed in action. My experience as a parent and adult ally has shown me that children can be a valuable activists. Young people and adults have taught me that involving younger and older children is a great way to create an ethic of action that can last a lifetime.

Here are a few tips to tap into children's energy, enthusiasm, ability to think outside the box and create new ideas.

Don't tokenize children.
Children should not be decorations or tokens in your activist campaign. Rather than simply making them walk in front of your march, engage children in sharing their ideas, creating dynamic promotional materials, teaching adults about the issue, and engaging adults.


Foster child/adult partnerships.
Interdependence of children and adults is a key to successful social change. Engage children and adults in meaningful action that is designed to foster positive relationships between them. Encourage intergenerational mentoring by introducing this concept to children and adults and create safe spaces for mutual teaching, critical thinking, and support.

Focus on historically disengaged children.
Children of color, low-income children, students with low grades, foster children, homeless children, children with disabilities, children of parents in the justice system, and other disconnected children are historically disengaged from activism opportunities in their communities. Focus on engaging these children in your activism campaigns to create vibrant, vigorous social change.

Challenge Adultism.
When adults’ views are favored over those of children, it is adultism. While this is appropriate in a variety of circumstances, it’s important to acknowledge that children have important ideas and knowledge, and can take action to affect their own lives, as well as the lives of those around them. Challenge adultism by engaging children in your activism, teaching them about adultism, and by training adults to accept children as partners.

Create Opportunities for Children to be Involved in Planning and Leadership.
Genuine leadership activities can include project planning, team facilitation, teaching others, and meaningful evaluation. Allowing children to take on genuine leadership activities helps them to develop lifelong skills and creates goodwill towards your community. Also, engage children and adults in meaningful and fun activities designed to foster positive relationships between them.

Accept Children for Who They Are and Meet Them Where They Are.
To foster positive relationships between children and adults, avoid dismissing technology, insulting children's culture, or criticizing what children know. Instead, challenge adults to accept children as partners. Engage children in the communities where they live, learn, and work every day. Involve organizations that children participate in and, where possible, connect their activism to learning. Help children identify resources that exist in their own communities and build social capital among neighbors by showing the positive force children can be in their own communities and throughout their lives.

Acknowledge Disparities.
All communities are not equal, and it is important to acknowledge that with children. For children, serving in neighborhoods where they do not live can help build understanding. Especially for historically disconnected children, serving where they do not live can help them recognize how they can become key to creating healthier, safer communities.

Sustain Children's Engagement.
Don't limit outreach to children to one day a year. Instead, use community activism as a launching point for children's engagement by involving them in activities throughout your community all year long. Children can provide vital energy, creative thinking and critical reflection in a variety of ways that can benefit your activist campaign or entire community! Always ask, “What's Next?”

Make Action Meaningful Through Reflection.
Children can become easily disenchanted without meaningful opportunities to reflect on their involvement. Challenge children to make meaning from their activism and encourage them to think critically about their involvement.

Build Knowledge Among Children.
Don’t expect children to be fully knowledgeable about your issue or the purpose of activism. Instead, ask them to share what they know and teach each other as well as the adults who are participating.

These are some basic steps to take when engaging children in activism. What would you add?

Sustaining Heartspace

The best way to sustain Heartspace is through creation.

Within each of us Heartspace is waiting to show us a clear, positive, and meaningful pathway to live our lives. Heartspace is absolute: It is who we are, in the deepest and most sincere way. Each of us is meant to be deeply and sustainably connected to things within and outside of ourselves throughout our entire lives- that's why Heartspace exists, to power that purpose. And I know that YOU are engaged in a way that is changing the world right now, and that is sustaining Heartspace.

Passionate, caring, and always hopeful, Heartspace can always guide every step of our day. More than our dreams, it knows the reality of our very being even when we do not. Heartspace is part of us, but not all of us; we are part of it, but not all of it. It goes beyond us and out into the world, touching every single person individually, while connecting us all, every single person on Earth, on a gentle, firm wave that we can ride anytime we want! 

Want to sustain that feeling?

You may not feel like a creative person, but don't worry - breathing is creation! Every time we breathe in oxygen, we create carbon dioxide. While its not useful for us, the trees surrounding us rely on it as they create oxygen in turn. So take comfort knowing everyone of us is a creator. 

Maya Angelou once said,

"We are all creative, but by the time we are three of four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else."

After learning about Heartspace you decided that you want to explore it. After exploring it, you know you want to live in it. That is why you must sustain the conscious connection you have to Heartspace. Oh, don't worry- Heartspace is always there, whether or not you acknowledge it. Sometimes we neglect to connect to ourselves and others, but that doesn't mean Heartspace is going away.

The awesome part about Heartspace is that when you are willing to be engaged and connected to something within and outside of yourself, connections will appear before you start looking for them. Creating things- whether personal connections or poetry or babies or carbon monoxide- is a surefire way for Heartspace to make itself obvious to you, and to sustain Heartspace through all of your days and ways.

Heartspace is creation: What you are creating is personal engagement in action; what you have created is social engagement made visible.

What are you creating in your life today?

Privatizing Afterschool, and Privatizing Society

I just read about a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 3498, that will expedite the process of privatizing afterschool activities across the country. This greatly concerns me as a career-long youth worker, as an advocate for nonprofit social services, and as a lowercase "d" democrat.

Let me begin by suggesting that in addition to being aware of wholesale efforts to privatize public education, every single privatized area of public education needs to be strategically cataloged and made apparent to the Public. They range from curriculum to assessment to professional development to food services, now tutoring and teachers, and so many other areas. The process that got us to this point started in the 1950s, caught steam almost three decades ago, and is well underway.

This process was not the gateway into our possible future as a privatized society; it's just the biggest door to indoctrinate young people. The original doors were utilities, the military, hospitals, prisons, and transportation. Once all regarded as public essential bastions of democratic living, now almost all these institutions are privatized across the United States.

Social services are one of the last great pillars holding up the roof of the so-called "public good". Once a public service, most mental health services are privatized today. Social welfare management is increasingly private, as are services for developmentally differently-abled people. Libraries, public health, social security, and so much more sits squarely in the sights of private corporations and people committed to profiteering off a unconcerned and disengaged Public. Schools are high on their lists, and afterschool programs are next.

Young people are obviously the best objects for privateers to target, both because of their susceptibility, and because of the long-term impact of "teaching them right". Since the decimation of public schooling is well underway, the battlefield for the next wave is afterschool programming. I am watching this unfold right now as standards for afterschool programming are emerging across the U.S. and internationally. As public schools proved, the process of standardization lends itself to professionalization, which in turn morphs quickly into privatization.

Unfortunately, The Radical Left has been largely useless in fighting the privatization movement. As demonstrated by what is happening in public schools, their voices have been co-opted by The Right to fight against the institution of public schooling, rather than the process of privatization. Even the non-radical Left has historically reduced school privatization to anti-unionism, which is a myopic perspective at best. By taking these stances, The Left is actually contributing to the further decimation of the democratic infrastructure that built the American middle class and provided a utopian ideal to motivate social mobility, particularly among the poor.

All of this critique examines the heinous nature of neoliberalism, which describes the process of privatizing all public services, including education, social security, water, prisons, public transportation, and welfare services. Neoliberals believe that when the government, acting on behalf of The People who vote for them through democratic process, is a bad manager of these services. They think all these institutions need fixed, and the only way to fix them is in through privatization. History has shown us there are very few benefits for The Public in privatization, while large corporations controlled by small groups of people make great deals of profit. I first learned about neoliberalism and its effects on young people from my mentor Henry Giroux, and I have continued to examine the ill effects of neoliberalism throughout society through the writing of many other writers, including Noam Chomsky and Amartya Sen.

From all of this I arrive at the belief that we need a new conversation in our society that goes beyond revolution for the sake of revolution and "anarchism as hope", because both of these fail. We have to make plain the mythologies of history. Let's examine our social capital and the social contract. Take our afterschool programs, along with our schools systems, social services, community development activities, democracy building movements, and let's critically explore their intentions, outcomes, and assumptions. Let's peel this onion throughout our society in order to make meaning of the chaotic disembowelment democracy is experiencing today. However, let's not abandon the positive powerful future we could all share together.

Who is to write that future? I have an idea that I've written about before - let's start with young people.

The MOST IMPORTANT Youth Engagement Books

Every few years I revisit my list of the most important books related to youth engagement, youth voice, youth involvement, and youth empowerment. Following is the November 2010 version.

In 2007 Youth On Board hired me to rewrite 15 Points to Successfully Involving Youth in Decision-Making with them. This version of the essential guide to youth involvement highlights the essential elements of successful project planning, this manual provides stories, hints, and tools to make your project successful. Order it from www.youthonboard.org

The Students Commission in Canada published Adults as Allies in Action. A well-designed introduction for adults, this publication gives basic information and ideas for adults to learn how to better support young people throughout society. Download it free at http://www.tgmag.ca/aorg/pdf/alliesFINAL_e_web.pdf

Barry Checkoway is a renown sociologist at the University of Michigan. His publication for the WK Kellogg Foundation, Adults as Allies, was the only of its kind when it was originally published. It highlights the role of adults in youth involvement by posing questions, offering activities, and providing stories that highlight effective intergenerational interaction. This publication seems to have disappeared from the Internet; share a URL with me if you find one please?

In the early 2000s The Innovation Center and National 4-H released a pivotal study called At the Table: Making the case for Youth in Decision-Making. Their publication called At the Table: Making the case for Youth in Decision-Making: Research Highlights from a Study on the impacts of Youth on Adults and Organizations is essential reading for anyone who wants to make the case. You can download in at www.theinnovationcenter.org

Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change was edited by Shawn Ginwright, Pedro Noguera, and Julio Cammarota. Academics study the current implementations of Youth Voice activities across the country and their effects on communities, policy, and more. Order from your local bookstore.

Building Community: A Tool Kit for Youth and Adults in Charting Assets and Creating Change was published by The Innovation Center. This publication makes it possible for individuals and groups everywhere to bring an inclusive, asset-based approach to youth involvement in their community. Filled with detailed information and case studies, it gives users what they need to create youth adult partnerships and lasting community development. You can order it at www.theinnovationcenter.org

The Child Rights Information Network published an issue of their newspaper focused on Children and Young People's Participation. It reviews how far children and young people's participation has progressed, through a series of international overviews and thematic case studies. The overviews present the state of youth involvement around the world, examine key barriers to effective participation and suggest specific recommendations, based on experience, to improve future practice. Case studies describe examples of children's participation in a variety of contexts. You can download it at
www.crin.org/docs/resources/publications/crinvol16e.pdf

Sociologist Roger Hart's wrote the first substantive publication on youth involvement for UNESCO called Children's Participation in Sustainable Development. A new edition of Hart’s classic, this book is a central text for anyone interested in studying youth involvement in communities. It introduces organizing principles, successful models, practical techniques and resources for involving children in a variety of social projects. You can order it at www.earthscan.co.uk

The Innovation Center and National 4-H Council worked together on a few publications, including the important Creating Youth/Adult Partnerships. For those just beginning to explore youth-adult partnerships as a strategy for community and organization building, this book offers a step-by-step tools to prepare youth and adults to work as a team. Designed with even the most novice trainer in mind, this curriculum provides activities that challenge preconceptions, explore benefits, assess readiness and build trust to strengthen their work in partnership. Order it at www.theinnovationcenter.org

The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada created a vital document when they published The Declaration of Accountability on the Ethical Engagement of Young People and Adults in Canadian Organizations. It shares a wide-ranging perspective of youth involvement, calling for organizations and communities to see beyond past activities and to identify and practice powerful ethical approaches to engaging youth. Despite the reference to Canadian organizations, this document is useful communities around the world. You can download it from www.fncaringsociety.com/projects/ethicalYouthEngagement.html

The Evolving Capacities of the Child by Gerison Lansdown is another UN imprint that I believe is absolutely vital to understanding the present and future of young people. The principle behind recognizing the ‘evolving capacities’ of the child recognizes that as young people acquire enhanced competencies, there is a diminishing need for protection and a greater capacity to take responsibility for decisions affecting their lives. The purpose of this publication is to open the discussion and promote debate to achieve a better understanding of how children can be protected, in accordance with their evolving capacities, and also provided with opportunities to participate in the fulfillment of their rights. A necessary read for all youth involvement practitioners. You can download it at www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/evolving-eng.pdf

The gang of Jee Kim, Mathilda de Dios, Pablo Caraballo, et al was led by William Wimsatt to write Future 500: Youth Organizing and Activism in the United States. This is the most comprehensive detailing of youth-led organizing ever published. The book details hundreds of organizations across the U.S., identifying them by location, issue-orientation, and constituency. You can order it from your local bookstore.

The Education Commission of the States’ Initiative wrote a brief summary called Integrating Youth Voice in Service Learning. It highlights the variety of ways Youth Voice can find traction when young people combine community service with state learning goals. You can download it online from http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/23/67/2367.htm

The Young Wisdom Project of the Movement Strategy Center wrote an essential publication with Making Space/Making Change: Profiles of Youth-Led and Youth-Driven Organizations. It is a powerful tool highlighting the successes and challenges of operating authentic Youth Voice programs. There are in-depth features on six programs across the nation, providing vital details and tips. You can learn more about it at www.freechild.org/ReadingList/reviews/MSMC.htm

Before their were national organizations promoting youth involvement, there was Wendy Schaetzel Lesko. Wendy, a friend of The Freechild Project's, published Maximum Youth Involvement: The Complete Gameplan for Community Change. This manual answers nearly 100 questions on how adults and organizations can support young people as equal partners and effective advocates in changing community norms and policies plus a 40-page Appendix with reproducible checklists and interactive skill-building activities. You can order it from www.youthactivismproject.org

My Meaningful Student Involvement Guide to Students as Partners in School Change was written to provide the first comprehensive guide to integrating student voice throughout the education system. It provides a concise introduction for educators on how to empower student voice in schools by engaging students as decision-makers, and more. Includes useful theoretical models, practical considerations, and valuable examples from across the United States. You can download it at www.soundout.org/MSIGuide.pdf

Perpetua Kirby published a vital report for the Carnegie Trust in the UK with Measuring the Magic: Evaluating and Researching Young People's Participation in Public Decision-Making. This report examines the different ways in which involving young people in decision – making could be measured and evaluated. It recommends a number of different ways of effectively evaluating work in a variety of settings. You can download it at www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/files/2643_MeasuretheMagic_001.pdf

The Youth Adult Partnerships Project in Alaska wrote The Power of an Untapped Resource: Exploring Youth Representation on Your Board or Committee. This handbook was created by youth for boards or committees interested in including young people. It lists basic criteria for creating an effective board that includes youth representation, including: how to prepare boards for youth involvement; create a position; choose representatives; address legal issues; recruit youth; and educate youth members. You can download it at www.aasb.org/PDF's/AASBPubs/HansB_bklt.pdf

Promoting Children's Participation in Democratic Decision-Making was written by Gerison Lansdown. This publication makes the case for a commitment to respecting children's rights to be heard and the need to consolidate and learn from existing practice. It draws on much of the already published research and thinking in the field and on a wide range of international initiatives. In so doing, it seeks to provide practical guidance on the lessons learned to date in working with children as partners. It is a contribution to the development of tools for those who see children 's rights to be heard as a means of promoting and protecting their other rights. You can download it at www.asylumsupport.info/publications/unicef/democratic.pdf

Re-focusing the Lens: Assessing the Challenge of Youth Involvement in Public Policy was a powerfully conclusive study by Phillip Haid, Elder C. Marques and Jon Brown. This short paper explores successful models of youth participation in policy development and identifies barriers to meaningful youth involvement in the policy process, based on case studies. Download at www.iog.ca/publications/lens.pdf

My SoundOut Student Voice Curriculum was written as the first collection of lesson plans for classroom teachers focused on engaging student voice ever published. Includes a variety of hands-on, project-based activities that teach students about learning, the education system, school reform, and how students can be meaningfully involved in all three! You can order it from www.soundout.org

Taking the Initiative: Promoting Young People's Involvement in Public Decision Making: International Reports was written by the Carnegie Young People Initiative in the UK. This report provides insights into the policy and administrative infrastructure that makes it possible for governments to conceptualize and implement program for young people. It underscores the importance of youth participation in informing policy and programming for young people. Countries featured in the report are Barbados, Uganda, Lithuania, Portugal, Denmark, South Africa and Germany. Download at
www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/cypi/publications/taking_the_initiative

Younger Voices, Stronger Choices: Promise Project's Guide to Forming Youth/Adult Partnerships by Michael McLarney and Loring Leifer was one of the first nationally available publications on youth involvement. An important primer on involving youth in meaningful ways, co-written by a youth and an adult. This is the foundational text for many other books on youth involvement. Order from your local bookstore.

Shepherd Zeldin, Annette Kusgen-McDaniel, and Dimitri Topitzes worked on a number of important studies together, and wrote Youth in Decision-Making: A Study on The Impacts of Youth on Adults and Organizations. This report discusses the impacts young people have on adults and organizations when they are involved in significant decision-making roles. It will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners, and concludes by commenting on the conditions that are needed to allow organizations to include more youth in their decision-making processes. Find it online.

Youth Participation and Community Change edited by Barry Checkoway and Lorraine Gutierrez is a forum where academics, students, and organizational leaders from across the U.S. explore current research and action happening in communities around the country. It includes a number of examples and wonderful descriptions from a variety of programs, and you can order it from your local bookstore.

The Youth Voices in Community Design Handbook was printed by the California Center for Civic Engagement and Youth Development. This is a spectacular, free how-to guide on getting youth involved in local policy making and community planning. The handbook provides a step-by-step guide to Youth Voice and is supported by an extensive online library of articles and activities. Download at http://www.participation.ro/resources/library/voices_handbook1.pdf/view

Jonna Justinianno and Cynthia Scherer wrote Youth Voice: A Guide for Engaging Youth in Leadership and Decision-Making in Service-Learning Programs for the Points of Light Foundation and the Corporation for National Service. The purpose of this guide is to provide service learning practitioners with basic information on Youth Voice - how to engage youth in leadership and decision-making in programs. This guide highlights what youth voice is, why it is important and models of Youth Voice that have been implemented by service learning practitioners. Download it at
www.kidsforcommunity.org/pdf/tools/youthguide.pdf

There are hundreds more publications available on youth involvement, youth voice, youth engagement, and youth empowerment. What would you add to this list?

What Did We Do?

“Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you – how do you think I feel to have to tell you, ‘We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its hum an rights – and you’ve got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.’ What did we do, who preceded you? I’ll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don’t you make the same mistake we made….” - Malcolm X

I do not like guilt. That's not to say that I haven't done some crumby things and felt bad about them, because I have. I just don't like feeling as if there was something more I could have done, can do still, and should be doing in a minute that I'm not doing right now. So I've lived my life in the now. Throughout my 20+ year long career in youth work I've done some hard work, quit suddenly, moved jobs, worked too much, and didn't learn lessons in the moments when I should have. There were times I struggled with bosses, coworkers, community members, politicians, movement leaders, and young people themselves. As Frank Sinatra said, "Regrets, I've had a few."

So tonight as I look back on these years, this time since the middle of my teens where I mark the beginning of my career, I smile over my work. The scan of the lands of engaging communities within themselves has taken me on a wonderful course through life and done me right. My experiences have literally brought me around the world, in front of intimate groups of great young people and adults, and opportunities to speak to massive crowds, decision-makers, and activists. I have influenced fields and driven policy agendas, motivated campaigns and rallied social change. This has been the most rewarding work, with powerful impacts and transformed realities.

Reading Brother Malcolm's quote, I take umbrage at his suggestion that his own generation somehow failed the Civil Rights movement, as would many people today, I'm sure. As history has taught, it takes time and the long view it provides to see the arc of transformation over the generations.

I am fortunate to be able to see, within my own generation, the heart of transformation beating throughout my own work. Without bragging or arrogance, I am glad to know that our communities are more engaged than they have been in generations. According to Robert Putnam's measures of social capital from Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, my analysis shows that we, as a Western society, are on an uptick. That excites me. While I cannot claim that I alone have changed anything in the grand scale of the movement, I do know that my work, in concert with that of millions of people around the world, is rapidly transforming society.

Thank you for joining me on the first part of this journey. Ahead is a grand new terrain that I am looking towards longingly, and that I've begun to reveal. I look forward to sharing more with you throughout the rest of this long, wonderful adventure!

The Bones Of Justice / The Capacity Of Youth

The tides of discrimination wash back and forth over the bones of justice. Whitewashing reality happens every day, as people conveniently forget what they do not want to remember, and coincidentally recall the most minute details at the perfect moment in time. Keeping these things in mind helps recall how some become the oppressors, and how others reinforce their power.


When considering the roles of young people of all ages throughout society it is easy to deny the truth. This morning I was speaking at a local summit called "Voices of Youth" in which a group of young people from local high schools were gathered to discuss young peoples' health and well-being. I was quickly reminded that adults, despite having the best intentions, often have it in for youth.


Rather than turning the floor over to young people to identify, develop, lead, and reflect on substantive social change we oftentimes regale them with our knowledge, hammer them over the heads with our capabilities, and expect young people to be passive recipients of whatever we're giving them. I AM GUILTY of doing this. As a public speaker I feel a twang of irresponsibility when I approach an opportunity in this "sit n' git" fashion. It pains me some days. But I do it anyway.


Where do adults establish their supremacy? 


Recently I talked with a group of adults- parents and organizational leaders and others- who boiled it down to the statement that "Adults have intellectual and moral capacity that youth do not, and that enables us to make decisions for them that they should not make for themselves."


However, "intellectual capacity" and "moral capacity" are both subjective perspectives that are determined a variety of factors. Reflecting on my own professional experience, I find that adults generally attribute all variable components of a young person- of any age- to their so-called "developmental ability", which in itself is a subjective variable dependent on concrete influences. Allowing for all those variables to reasonably influence policy and programs affecting children and youth would encourage much more efficacy in how we educate, socialize, and otherwise engender the experience of being young throughout our society. 


Today I'm curious whether there are boundaries to the intellectual and moral capacity of young people. What do YOU think?

Youth Are Leading Social Evolution

Hey, remember when it seemed like that loud, unruly kid was a punk? Remember when that quiet girl doing art in the back of the room was weird? Remember when the kids who were leaders were predictable and understandable? What a cool world that we live in that none of that is true anymore!

Over the last 100 years our society has been busy birthing new realities, thrusting itself forward into an unfamiliar, unknowable future. Women's suffrage and civil rights were the cusp of these changes, as our family structures, social relationships, and cultural growth has reflected an even broader transformation. Young people, who at first were merely keeping pace with those changes, went from being the canaries in the coalmine to being the leaders at the front, taking charge, making movements, and driving social change as never before. Today, young people are the bellweather of the brave new future we continue to move towards.

Look around you! See those kids fixing their own problems on the playground? That's evolution! See the teens in the alleyway finishing that tremendous graffiti mural? That's evolution! See those tents and that meeting in the park where the Occupy movement is keeping hold? That's evolution! Who is at the head of all this? Young people.

I challenge you to see today's reality: The Evolution Is Underway. Can you see it? Can you feel it? The economy, politics, education... Young people are stepping in front of these speeding trains that are bulleting their ways through our society, and they're doing what appears to be "crazy stuff". But that crazy stuff, unfamiliar and scary as it may seem, is bringing us towards a positive, powerful future for all people everywhere all the time.

The Freechild Project has been steadily moving towards demonstrating this evolution for more than 10 years, and during that time we've made some tremendous strides. Step with us into the future to see where we're all going - together!

Get Walking: Why Your Life Can't Wait

Adam's Note: I originally wrote this in 2008. Still fits, so I'm going to share it with you!

When I was young I thought education was an A + B = C journey. As an adult I have found there is more than one way to learn what I need to know in order to make a difference. Powerful experiences as a youth activist led me to want to earn a bachelor’s degree in community development. That should have changed when I was thrown out of college at the age of 19.

Fortunately, it did not.

Going to college wasn’t an easy thing for me in the first place. As a child my family moved constantly, and when we eventually settled down I found myself growing up as a low-income white kid in an African American neighborhood. After becoming the only one of my siblings to graduate from high school on time, I knew I had to go to college. Nobody taught me about financial aid, and after a semester I was not allowed back because I didn’t know how to pay the bill.

Luckily, I had enough gravitas not to let that stop me from continuing on my education – only now I had to get paid for learning. A nonprofit in my neighborhood hired me to run after school activities and a late-night basketball program. Then there were jobs at a nature center, a drug treatment center, as a living skills instructor for high-risk youth, and as a challenge course facilitator. I served two terms in AmeriCorps with Kurdish and Iraqi refugee children in the Midwest and as a challenge course director for high-risk youth in the Pacific Northwest. The federal government hired me to promote service-learning in northern New Mexico, and when I was hired as the youth ambassador for Washington State’s education agency I was able to complete my bachelor’s degree, eight years after I had started it. I went on to start a national nonprofit organization, and today I am a successful consultant and freelance writer focused on youth engagement for schools, nonprofits and government agencies across the country.

What I know now that I didn’t know when I was younger is that there is no linear path in learning: you don’t just start here and go there. Instead of doing what television shows told me to do, I had to figure out what matters to me, and when I did that I discovered why there is an book about education called, We Make the Road by Walking. That title best describes my education: I only learn what I need to know by actually doing what I want to do.

If you want to learn about changing the world, that is what I want you to do: Go volunteer or get a job, and by doing it you will discover what you need to learn next. We make the road by walking – so please, get walking! The world can’t wait any longer.

Why Personal Engagement Matters To ME

My passion for personal engagement comes from a deeply rooted place within me that was formerly deeply concerned about community engagement, and before that, youth engagement. This blog explores some of the reason why personal engagement means so much to me.

A highly principled man, my dad has always taken his job as a father seriously. Lessons and lectures have been par for the course my whole life, and I sat in my room more than once to “think about it” after I did something wrong. When I was a teenager Dad was constantly dragging me along to do something, and I believed it was my obligation to whine whenever I thought I could get away with it.

That included the first time I remember hopping into the old van that he drove every Thursday.

“Where are we going?” I asked, honestly unsure.

“To the food bank downtown,” he said, straight-faced as always.

“Why? Our food bank’s at the church. Isn’t this the church’s van?”

“We’re going to bring food from the food bank downtown back to the church.”

“Why doesn’t someone else do that?”

“That’s what we’re doing, bud.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t take something without giving something in return.”


Whether shoveling the next door neighbor’s snowy walks, sleeping in a half-built Habitat for Humanity house to keep it from being vandalized, or painting the walls of the neighborhood nonprofit that hosted all my mom’s programs for kids, giving back is simply what we did in our family. I learned early that no matter how poor or rich we felt, we had to give back to the larger community that gave us so much.

We can get engaged in our own lives by giving back to the larger communities that every day, in so many ways, give back to us, whether or not we are aware of it. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once implored the world to acknowledge this, writing in his 1963 book Strength to Love,

“We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women.... When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs, we are beholden to more than half the world.”

Today, with so many of us wrapped up in social media and global technology, it may seem simplistic to think about the production cycle to show our need for connection. However, I want to take that global perspective and think about it locally in our own lives. These are our motivations for how we relate to others.

• Do you have a parent who stays with your child when you are at work? 
• Who are the neighbors who check on your house when you are traveling? 
• Does the professor add extra time to his day to send you email alerting you of the test tomorrow? 
• When you were younger, who were the adults in your life that kept an eye on you after school? 
• Did that volunteer election official greet you at the voting booth last week? 

All of these people, and many, many others are contributing their time to your well-being every single day, whether or not you see it.

I see the need for this type of honesty throughout my professional life working with community volunteers, nonprofit managers, social workers, and teachers, among others. Our motivations for how we relate to others always shine through in the quality of our work on behalf of others. Reflected in how well students learn in schools, these motivations also become obvious in places of worship in how well congregations relate to the world around them. The motivations are obvious, too, in our perceptions of others, including whether we see others with apathy, pity, sympathy, charity, empathy, and solidarity. They become apparent in the actions and reactions of the giver and the receiver of the service.

Upon her release from 16 years of house arrest by the Myanmar regime in 2010, the democratically elected leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, said, “I do not believe that I’m sacrificing. In fact, I feel very uneasy when others used the word sacrifice to describe my life. It sounds like I’m demanding returns for my investments. I chose to walk on this journey, because I solely believed in it and wholeheartedly decided to do so, and I’m willing and able to pay for the consequences…”

I have come to understand that I am wholeheartedly responsible for all my actions in life, and I want to encourage people in choosing to walk their own journey, whatever it is, to become wholeheartedly responsible for whatever may come to them. That is a vital step in personal engagement, and, as I've explored it, community engagement, too.

Quotes About Common Action

The following quotes are about common action, working together, and the web of life to which we all belong. They help drive my work every single day.

‎"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality... This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."

― Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come to because your liberation is bound up in mine, we can work together.”

― Lilla Watson

"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people."

― Eduardo Galeano

"Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

― Paulo Freire

‎"I do not believe that I’m sacrificing. In fact, I feel very uneasy when others used the word sacrifice to describe my life. It sounds like I’m demanding returns for my investments. I chose to walk on this journey, because I solely believed in it and wholeheartedly decided to do so, and I’m willing and able to pay for the consequences…”

― Aung San Suu Kyi 

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." 

― John Donne

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”

― Herman Melville 

In the progress of personality, first comes a declaration of independence, then a recognition of interdependence.

― Henry Van Dyke 

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

― Mohandas Gandhi 

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

― Blaise Pascal 

All life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

― Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.” 

― bell hooks 

 “Stories are webs, interconnected strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end. Each person is a strand of the story.”

― Neil Gaiman

I died from minerality and became vegetable

And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.

I died from animality and became man.

Then why fear disappearance through death?

Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that, soaring higher than angels 

What you cannot imagine,

I shall be that. 

-Rumi

What inspires YOU?

Connecting Personal and Community Engagement

For a long time I thought the way to engage children and youth in their communities was to just do it. Just go and engage them. Then I was trained by a few different national organizations in a common approach to youth engagement: Recruit youth into a program, introduce them to a topic, train them the skills they needed to create change, take action, and reflection with them when they were done. Connect young people to something greater than themselves. For the ten years I promoted this as a pathway to youth engagement. And I was wrong.

After stumbling around and fudging the question of why this model frequently doesn't work for years, I have come across the answer. You see, for years I took this approach to becoming engaged in my local community myself: I would start doing something I was interested in, learn more about it, do something with it, and learn from it along the way and when I was done. But often the results weren't sustained or particularly impacting on my world, and didn't feel fulfilling in impacting others' lives. My desire to be engaged in my community was often like karate to a 13 year old boy: Interesting for a minute, then gone with the change of tide.

Through my professional experience and personal reflection I discovered that the missing element to engaging people in communities is ourselves: We spend so much time trying to promote community engagement and youth engagement and parent engagement and neighborhood engagement and student engagement and social engagement that we forget to think about the individual people we are trying to engage throughout our communities. Communities are made of people, individual people.

When was the last time you felt connected to something greater within yourself? When have you felt compelled to become engaged in the world around you from within you - not because some nonprofit staff asked you to or a friend recruited you to, but because you genuinely, earnestly, really wanted to? When have you asked yourself critical questions about your own engagement in the world and within yourself? The missing step in community engagement is personal engagement.


Every single person has the right, nee the obligation, to become deeply engaged to something within themselves, to become genuinely connected to what I am calling Heartspace. What I have found is that the absolutely most successful community engagement programs- most sustainable and impacting- are the ones that connect people to something within themselves first. From that place, and only from that place, can empathy flourish, which is requisite for the most effective social change.

Personal engagement is the next great frontier in social change.

Oh, and let me add that personal engagement is not easy: Paulo Freire wrote that, "Liberation is thus a childbirth, and a painful one." Personal engagement is a evolutionary liberation of the mind that can cause suffering, and that's why more people don't do it. Rather than being encouraged to look around ourselves for the solutions to our world's suffering, we're brought inside of ourselves to find out what's wrong with ourselves. That place of personal acknowledgment can lead to a deep commitment to help others- but not until that bridge is crossed. Getting there can be rocky, so step lightly and stay encouraged.

CommonAction Consulting is now providing workshops focused on personal engagement and Heartspace. Learn more by contacting us today.

Encouraging Heartspace

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained." - William Blake

The surest way to Heartspace - the engine of personal engagement - is to simply go. For the young person who is driven to allow the engine of purpose power their way through life, simply go. For the parent who wants to impart to their child the warm security of Heartspace, simply go. For the older person feeling Heartspace as they transition roles in the latter of their life, simply go. 


Heartspace can be a soft place, one that can seem intimate and private, alone and contemplative - for some. For others it can be a celebration, alive and vibrant, soulful and popping. For others still, it is an amalgamation with blood and bone and mind and hands and feet and clouds and dirt all mixed together. Heartspace is all of these things.


If you are concerned about finding your Heartspace, you are already on your way. Feel your way there. Work your way there. Live your way there. Heartspace is accessible to everyone, all of the time. It is an innate part of every single person, no matter how far removed you might think you are. 


There are challenges to intentionally finding and living in our Heartspace, for sure. You may not have the best paying job or the loveliest house, the fanciest degree or the longest list of accomplishments. Heartspace is more than all of those. Live true to your passion and courage and strength and will and you will surely find the right people in the right places doing the right things for the right reasons, and surely that is a clear indication that you're in your Heartspace. 


Heartspace doesn't look identical in any two people; it's like snowflakes, leaf lines, and fingerprints - all are unique. There are echoes of our own Heartspace in others, and that's what you'll gravitate towards for the rest of your life. Know that.


And if, along the way towards your Heartspace, you feel discouraged, remember what bell hooks charged us with: "Maintain hope, even when the harshness of reality may suggest the opposite." Entering our Heartspace requires hope, and hope upon hope, and the willful ignorance of denial. 


I know that you'll get there if you're not there already, and I look forward to meeting with you along the way.

Heartspace: The Engine of Personal Engagement

It can be really exciting when we start discovering what moves us personally, what we're passionate about, what makes our wheels turn. Spark plugs start firing in that engine between the brain and the gut, in that magical space that feels like power and awesomeness and excitement and purpose. I call that engine Heartspace, and it's a wonderful place to become familiar with.

Heartspace is the quiet inner voice that guides us towards the things that speak most deeply to us. We know it by the emotions that speak most directly to it, like passion, courage, and joy. Desire, intention, and compassion come from our Heartspace, too. Heartspace is where our deepest interests come from, and where our most powerful energy comes from. It is magic, made real.

There are people who live all their lives in Heartspace, and they are wonderfully engaged people. They aren't just the Einsteins and Kings; they are common folk who celebrate their deep connection to themselves every single day. Everyone is capable of this.

For people who have not lived in their Heartspace for their whole lives, discovering that space might feel like an introduction to a long lost friend. That's because it is: All people from their youngest years live in their Heartspace, if only for a little while.

Heartspace is the engine of natural curiosity that drives our childhoods and compels our youth. This is the reason why I choose to work with young people over the beginning of my career. Most in touch with their Heartspace, young people are the grand hope of our society for this reason.

Poor are those among us who lose their capacity to dream, to create their courage, to denounce and announce... - Paulo Freire

There are factors that literally kidnap us from our Heartspace, most extending from abuse of some sort. Those factors eat away at that connection. I lived some of those factors as a child, and my Heartspace was challenged. But more than endure, I thrived. My parents encouraged me to find and attach to the things that inspired me, drove me, and moved me. The adults who surrounded me moved me and compelled me and challenged me to see beyond the problems in my life. I found my Heartspace young, and stayed with it.

Risks to our Heartspace continue into our adulthood, but they shift from external abuse imposed on us by extenuating circumstances towards internal motivations that extend from our childhoods. There are a lot of ways to rediscover our Heartspace as adults. Last week I blogged 10 Questions on Personal Engagement, and those questions provide a logical entryway into Heartspace.

We can work with our challenges and transform our lives, move from being interested, and find our Heartspace. CommonAction Consulting is now leading workshops to do that.