Youth development is a policy perspective that emphasizes providing services and opportunities to support all young people in developing a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging, and power. While individual programs can provide youth development activities or services, the youth development approach works best when entire communities offer youth development opportunities. This can occur when a community as a whole agrees upon standards for what all young people need to grow into happy and healthy adults and then creates a continuum of care and opportunities to meet those needs. Youth development also is about strengthening families and communities and involving young people in those efforts.

Young people have important insights and ideas and are invaluable assets to families, organizations, and communities. Yet often these positive characteristics are overlooked. Various reports on surges in youth violence, teen pregnancy, gang violence, in concert with media coverage of negative youth stereotypes encourage many adults to have an inherent mistrust of young people. They blame youth for problems in society, including violence, and believe young people are disinterested, irresponsible, and dangerous. For some young people, this contributes to feelings of low self-worth and hopelessness. A growing sense of social isolation, a lack of positive adult relationships, and disconnection from mainstream society, in many cases, fuels youth’s perceptions of limited opportunities, a sense of fatalism, and frustration, and anger.

The youth development approach focuses on strengthening the capacity of young people to successfully navigate the life stage of adolescence. Its underlying premise is based on the belief that youth are valuable assets and can make positive contributions to family school, and community life. It emphasizes not just providing services, but offering a network of opportunities to encourage youth to get active and involved, and to support them in developing a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging, and power.

Some of the developmental outcomes anticipation by the youth development model include:

• a positive sense of self
• a sense of connection
• commitment and service to others
• the ability and motivation to succeed in school and participate fully in family and community life