The Construction of a Grassroots Youth Group: Exploring the Tensions Within the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

• In Event: 60.083 - Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 60.083-8 - Youth-Led Efforts for Educational Equity

Abstract

Community-based or non-profit organizations are playing an increasingly large role in educational reform movements. In this paper I explore the tensions that can result in youth work from the structures present in what some scholars have termed, the “Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” Drawing from 12 interviews and participant observation data of an ethnographic case study with a grassroots Latino youth group, I found that the construction of an autonomous, grassroots group highlighted many of the limitations and tensions that the youth and youth workers faced when they were part of a nonprofit organization. Therefore, in this paper I argue that there is a need to engage in a conversation about the tensions, complexities and possibilities in spaces of grassroots community work.

Author

• Julissa Ventura, University of Wisconsin - Madison