Critical Youth Empowerment: Cultural Identity and Relationship Development in Mentoring and Service-Learning Programs

• In Event: Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: Empowerment and Community Activism for Social Justice

Abstract

This study employs a Critical Youth Empowerment (CYE) framework to examine how practices in three youth programs support disenfranchised youth as empowered agents and how serving as mentors can alter undergraduate students’ relationships to marginalized communities. Researchers address 1) how colleges of education create experiences in which youth discover individual and communal power, 2) how program participation helps close cultural gaps between mentors and mentees, and 3) how these programs educate future teachers to create empowering classrooms. Findings illustrate ways to provide support for marginalized students; indicate that more programs are needed addressing youth empowerment and the reciprocal relationships; and illustrate that a cultural identity dimension should be added to the CYE model to address cultural gaps between program participants.

Authors

• Sheri Carmel Hardee, University of North Georgia

• Candace Marie Thompson, University of North Carolina - Wilmington

• Louise B. Jennings, Colorado State University

• Noorjehan Kelsey Brantmeier, James Madison University