In this picture, I see a group of youth giving back to their community and helping to build a playground that improves society. It also shows how youth can work with each other to create their own designs and ideas for building innovative things. This project looks like it took up a lot of time but I think the time was used productively and it's benefiting the children that live in this area. The group that built this playground was DownCity Design which is an organization that involves young people in designing and building solutions for their communities. What drew me to this work was seeing the youth give back to the community and really do something to make a difference. This wasn't in the neighborhood before and now thanks to the youth in the community for helping, these children now have a play pavilion.
Know: Youth being resilient group by having positive supports and opportunities After- school programs having positive effect on youth's behaviors and offer them opportunities Learn: Deficit-approach: intervening when young people exhibited problems or identifying "at-risk" youth and to prevent them from engaging in bad behaviors Research out there on resiliency that had three critical elements for youth to succeed which are caring relationships, clear and fair expectations and opportunities The youth development movement- redefining success for young people and programs More: Theory and practice of youth development Growth of after-school programs

Thanks for this post. One thing that stuck out to me in your description is the idea of youth creating their own designs and SOLUTIONS. I wonder if/how the experience for young people of solving design problems and creating solutions through architecture and building impacts the way they think about making change and creating solutions in other parts of their lives and communities.
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