Positive Youth Development

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International Year of Youth: Inclusion of Youth at All Levels

The extraordinary power of youth to change their own worlds and the world around them strikes me anew every day.I see this power manifest in diverse forms and settings – from the Russian program participant who created a break-dancing school to engage at-risk youth in her small town, to the two teenagers from MetroTeenAIDS who, last week, addressed more than 70 international development professionals about their role in educating thousands of other youth in Washington, DC, about STDs and HIV testing.

The extraordinary power of youth to change their own worlds and the world around them strikes me anew every day.

From Fixing Mistakes to Building Strengths

The smile, stickers and Halloween candy I’d brought as a USRVI volunteer weren’t enough. Sasha needed much more than I could give in just one hour, and I had no idea where to start. At 15, he had run away from the orphanage to go home—many children in Russian state institutions have at least one living parent—and found things there in a state of chaos. Orphanage staff heard he was begging on the local electrichka train, found him and brought him back.

The smile, stickers and Halloween candy I’d brought as a USRVI volunteer weren’t enough. Sasha needed much more than I could give in just one hour, and I had no idea where to start.

At 15, he had run away from the orphanage to go home—many children in Russian state institutions have at least one living parent—and found things there in a state of chaos. Orphanage staff heard he was begging on the local electrichka train, found him and brought him back.

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