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Leadership Curriculum Helps Eurasian Youth Effect Grassroots Change

Many initiatives aimed at youth focus solely on keeping them out of trouble. A recent meeting of Eurasian Undergraduate Exchange Program (UGRAD) fellows turned this thinking upside down, as participants brainstormed youth-led projects to meet the needs of their peers and get them involved in their communities. The IREX-developed training “Youth Leadership in Community Development,” held in January at the UGRAD Mid-Program Workshop, empowered 168 Eurasian student leaders with the tools to assess their communities’ needs, design projects that respond to those needs, and win community buy-in. UGRAD, a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State and administered by IREX, aims to develop student leaders through a year of non-degree undergraduate study in the United States, community service, and internships.

IREX’s leadership curriculum employs positive youth development theory, which draws on youth as valuable agents of change. Before the training began, Karin Adkins of the International Youth Federation led fellows in an open discussion of problems faced in their communities. Corruption, the plight of orphans, environmental issues, and the quality of education were recurring themes. In the first module of the training, participants built on these broadly outlined challenges and learned to gather more specific needs assessment data through interviews, focus groups and community surveys. “[The needs assessment training helped me] figure out possible questions that need attention,” said one fellow. Another commented, “The trainers helped me to identify and think deeply about problems in my country so that after going back I could think about a resolution.”

Following this training, participants learned to design and implement effective projects, manage budgets, and delegate responsibilities among their fellow peer organizers. In small groups, fellows completed a project-map worksheet outlining the goal, activities, and timeline of their sample project. “The project map is a truly powerful tool, as it incorporates so much information in an organized way, so that people who are involved directly/indirectly in that project can take advantage of it,” said one participant. The final segment of the training equipped UGRAD fellows with outreach strategies to engage volunteers, beneficiaries, and stakeholders in their communities.

As UGRAD fellows prepare to return to their home communities, many already have youth-led project ideas in mind. Elena Seryapina plans to invite her adviser and professors at the University of North Dakota to train law students and teachers in Russia on mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) stratgies.  “As I see it, this experience exchange will be the first step on the way to the legal reform in Russia by implementing new ways of conflict resolution,” Elena said.  “Right before I started working on this project I reviewed all my notes from the workshop in DC.  They were helpful in…figuring out the needs of my local community, finding out what sphere of ADR to focus on.” In all, over 75 percent of students who responded to a survey said they would definitely use the information on project design and management or that they were very likely to do so. Many are planning to apply for Alumni Small Grants or Project Smile funding to put their ideas into action. “This workshop was very important to me because I always wanted to help the orphanage in my town, but I did not know how to do that,” said one participant. Said another future organizer, “Thanks to this training I found out what I want to do and how to start it and how to do it all.”

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