a federally incorporated non-profit corporation
partners in producing the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge®
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For a full text
of Brittanie Sweetnam's feedback three months after she was a YCLC
participant
An Invitation to Partnership
Are you a natural partner in discovery learning?May 2005.
The producers of the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge (YCLC) have applied to be federally incorporated as the non-profit corporation YCLC CANADA INC. and will be applying additionally for charitable status.Having completed six prototype discovery learning events, incorporating hundreds of changes along the way to better serve the youth who attend, we now need to partner with the community-at-large to put our youth leadership package fully into the public domain. We will create two types of partnerships - One-event Partnerships and Sustaining Multi-event Partnerships - both of which will be laid out in detail in ajoining pages. The first question is "Who are our natural partners?
Compatibility Between our Vision and Yours
Programs which serve youth development in the 21st century will require a new dynamic to capture the attention of todayís youth. That new dynamic - discovery learning - has been appearing in small pockets from psychology departments at universities around the globe, and from individuals who have sized up what works with youth, and who, like us, have replicated it time and time again to fine tune it to make sure it works. In the shifting sands of todayís uncertain world, youth need to be able to find their own personal inner strength and steadfastness to negotiate their way.
One of our recent ìgraduates,î Brittanie Sweetnam (age 16) noted, three months after attending her YCLC ìTo quote Rudyard Kipling, strength is havingÝenough work to do, and strength enough to do the work. Someone who has strength as an asset does what they are best at and staysÝpersistent andÝ motivated all the way throughÝ challenges that come their way."Ý
Much has changed since Kiplingís work inspired Lord Baden-Powell to create the Scouting Movement. The global village has become borderless, and youth are exposed to many more influences than their extended family and whatever their small community could offer them at the turn of the last century. Todayís youth are exposed to a mixed blessing of the world as it is unfolding, and the world as it is portrayed dramatically on television and movies. Todayís youth can see hundreds of incidents of violence in a week just by pressing a button. How does one find oneís way?
Todayís emerging answer is that a youth cannot be told how to find that way, but he or she can discover it, and can be positioned to discover it if the conditions are right.
Luminaries like Michael Meade (whose highly effective work with adolescent boys is featured on our February 2005 Documentary CD) and Martin E. Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania (who showed that lifelong depression could be averted by a 12 hour intervention among Grade 5 and 6 students), and Dr. Mihali Csikszentmihalyi, (who observed as a 10 year old how Hungarian youth ìrose to the occasionî during the Nazi invasion of World War II, and then spent a career determining the optimal conditions in which youth learn) have, among others, including our own group, given us a huge leg up.
Meade says ìat the end of childhood something awakens in people that has profound levels to it, and youth is the time it has to be touched, and from that time - core aspects, hints of what that life is to be about, occur.î
Thus, our VISION: Youth Discovering Themselves - a New Dynamic For the 21st Century
Step One: Informing Potential Partners
Our partners, as we move forward, will be groups and individuals who are willing to conspire to bring about something new and effective for the youth they serve, and will have overlapping skills which compliment what we bring to the table. We know little, for instance, about fundraising for or marketting our product. Neither are we an agency with a ready source of youth or volunteers. We must work with and rely on others.
On the other hand, we do know a lot about what works with youth, about getting the best from volunteers, about training people to hold the liminal space* required for life-altering change to occur. What we have learned is laid out in the February 2005 Documentary CD,and this is where prospective partner will or will not find a congruence with our approach - before considering how and whether to work with us to create the next steps.
Step Two: Creating Working One-Time Partnerships and Sustaining Partnerships
We will work first with groups / individuals to create a community partnership to produce a single youth event. Since our method utilizes volunteers in a 1:2 ratio with youth, and since both age and cultural diversity are key ingredients to success, it may be appropriate to work with more than one partner. Since funds are raised and materials are acquired, at least in part, by donation, a partner who is an existing charity will be sought to take the lead. Partners will not be asked to participate beyond what they can readily provide - even if this is youth, volunteers or publicity in their own organzation. Partners will bring what they can naturally bring, and no partnership will be formalized until all required funding has been assembled, so that no one is left with a deficit.
We have also made provision to forge longer term partnerships, which will exist to bring about wider use of this vehicle, and to provide ongoing support for youths who graduate from our role-playing, participatory theatre challenge-based programs -but the one-event community partnerships are our immediate focus.
Since our adult volunteers will be stepping out of usual roles to engage in participatory theatre (much as one does when one attends a murder mystery evening),we have chosen to call these one-event collaborations The Dark Knight Aventure Theatre Troupe - after the Dark Knight character in our drama. The piece of theatre presented will roughly follow the 14th century Knight Templar search for the lost Templar treasure, in which adult volunteers will play roles, and which engage youth to find roles for themselves, thuseliciting self-respect, authenticity and appreciation for the diversity of oneís peer group.
CLICK HERE to access STEP TWO in Forging Partnerships
* liminal space (limen is Latin for threshold) Participants in liminal space are ìbetwixt and betweenî - not ruled by the environment from which they came, and not yet invested in the environment to which they will return. Liminal space has been successfully used in succcessful adult work including Open Space (Harrison Owen) Future Search, Dr. Scott Peck's community- building and Dr, David Bohm's Dialog process. In liminal space one has to innovate, draw on deeper currents within, engage in trial and error, for here, few rules and no precedents guide the process. Liminal space is portrayed in the YCLC Canada Inc.logo as the intersection of two circles. Dr. Mihali Csikszentmihalyiís research has shown that forging relationships during youth, largely by imitating others, delays the ability to create needed liminal space,a quiet space within from which one can launch oneself into the world as ìoneís own person.î
To contact Program Creator, BRIAN BAILEY M.D. directly, call 819-827-0561
or e-mail him at:
brian@econichehouse.com or brian@leadersoftomorrrowinstitute.com