Negotiating Among Opportunity and Constraint: The Participation of Young People in Out-of-School-Time Activities

Out-of-school opportunities -- such as arts and music programs, sports teams, community service and youth entrepreneurship opportunities -- are increasingly seen as potentially powerful tools to promote positive youth development and to prevent problematic behaviors. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with 99 students in 10th grade in four Chicago Public Schools, this Chapin Hall report explores young people's perspectives on their use of out-of-school time and the influences, barriers, contexts, and processes that contribute to their choices and experiences. The report investigates how young people learn about and choose to get involved in different kinds of out-of-school opportunities and the influence that family members, peers, and non-family adults have on their thinking and decision making. It also explores the relationship between young people's participation in out-of-school programs and their interests, aspirations, and assessments of the kinds of opportunities and barriers found within their families, schools and neighborhoods. Finally, it offers conclusions and recommendations about how to improve opportunities for young people based on the insights provided by them, including specific suggestions about approaches to outreach, access, ongoing engagement and program provision

Mixed-income development in Chicago helps residential integration but also continues social exclusion.

Over the past two decades, many cities have attempted to tackle urban poverty through mixed-income redevelopment of public housing estates. Using Chicago’s Plan for Transformation as a case study, Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph find that efforts to integrate public housing residents into more economically diverse developments actually lead to new forms of inequality and marginalization, rather than well-functioning mixed income neighborhoods. They write that developers are often focused on maintaining the attractiveness and market value of redeveloped communities, which often leads to the adoption of zero-tolerance mechanisms of monitoring and control against low-income residents

Toward Greater Effectiveness in Community Change: Challenges and Responses for Philanthropy

Offers a model suggesting how foundations can most effectively think about, do the work of, and learn from community change. Part of the series Practice Matters: The Improving Philanthropy Project

Toward Greater Effectiveness in Community Change: Challenges and Responses for Philanthropy - Executive Summary

Philanthropies of all types seek to improve communities—for lots of reasons, and in lots of different ways. Their efforts have produced promising results and some beginning lessons about community change. But more remains to be done to ensure that philanthropic investments in community change meet expectations and that funders use the emerging lessons to move their agendas forward. Based on interviews conducted for this paper, many funders are eager to take on that challenge

Toward Greater Effectiveness in Community Change: Challenges and Responses for Philanthropy - Discussion Guide

The goal of this discussion guide is to assist foundations to engage in a dialogue about how philanthropy can become more effective in its support of community-change initiatives. The guide can be used in at least two ways. A foundation or a group of foundations intending to launch a community change initiative can use the guide as part of its planning process. Alternatively, foundations already involved in supporting a community-change initiative can use the guide as a framework to review the project's status and examine whether any changes in philanthropic practice make sense

Embedded Philanthropy and the Pursuit of Civic Engagement

· This article examines a range of civic engagement strategies pursued by embedded funders conducting community-change work in chronically disadvantaged communities. · Embedded funders are place-based foundations that (1) commit to working in a particular community or communities over an extended period of time; (2) pursue direct and ongoing relationships with a range of community actors; (3) make community relationships and partnerships a primary vehicle of their philanthropic operation; and (4) provide extensive supports and resources beyond conventional grantmaking. · Working as an embedded funder tends either to correlate with a prior commitment to civic engagement or to promote the development of such a commitment. Many of the strengths that embedded funders show in their civic engagement efforts derive from the defining characteristics and shared features of embedded philanthropy. · The article focuses on four embedded funders: the Humboldt Area Foundation in northwest California, the Jacobs Family Foundation in San Diego, and the Denver Foundation and Piton Foundation, both in Denver. These foundations have all prioritized the promotion of civic engagement, they have done so in distinct ways, and they represent a range of foundation types and styles of embedded philanthropy. · These foundations have pursued four general types of civic engagement strategy: direct support for individual and group civic engagement activities at the grassroots level, creating spaces and processes for such activities that did not previously exist, creating or supporting an organizational infrastructure for expanded mobilization and citizen engagement, and leveraging their own relationships and influence. · Successful civic engagement efforts are predicated on knowing a community and being known by it, and on the ability to earn trust through a variety of means. They are also enhanced by the creative use of organizational structure and staffing. An embedded operating style supports and facilitates each of these key elements in the promotion of civic engagement

Living in a Mixed-Income Development: Resident Perceptions of the Benefits and Disadvantages of Two Developments in Chicago

Policy-makers in several countries are turning to income- and tenure-mixing strategies in an attempt to reverse decades of social and economic isolation in impoverished urban areas. In the US city of Chicago, all high-rise public housing developments across the city are being demolished, public housing residents are being dispersed throughout the metropolitan area and 10 new mixed-income developments are being created on the footprint of former public housing complexes. Findings are presented from in-depth interviews with residents across income levels and tenures at two mixed-income developments and the paper explores residents' perceptions of the physical, psychological and social impacts of the mixed-income setting on their lives.

Liminal citizenship: Young people's perspectives on civic and political engagement in three European cities

Concerns about young people s disengagement from civic and political life, particularly disengagement of those from marginalized backgrounds, are prominent in contemporary discourse and increasingly serve as an impetus driving youth policy. Effectively engaging disadvantaged youth, however, can be difficult, and the factors that contribute to these challenges are complex. This is particularly true with regard to the engagement of young people as citizens civic and political actors with autonomy and responsibility for contributing to the common good. This article focuses on the perspectives of disadvantaged urban youths in London, Belfast, and Dublin regarding their orientations toward civic and political life, the opportunities available to them to participate civically and politically, and the barriers they face to engagement. Based on this analysis, we outline some of the implications that young people s perspectives and experiences provide for informing policy and practice to promote meaningful youth civic and political engagement.peer-reviewed2022-06-3