One day last week we walked into Summit Prep, a charter school and one of our Youth Development partners. We knew that there would be swarms of  9^th, 10th and 12^th graders rushing in to find out about coming out to the ranch for one of our month-long social and environmental justice and sustainability programs: “From Forest to Farm to Food”. Lugging a projector, lap top and screen up the steps to sign in at the front desk, I was suddenly bowled over by a loud, “Sam!”  I turned to find a student from last year’s program looking completely astonished to see me.  “What are you doing here?!  Hi!!  Is Bill here?  What are you doing?” Questions and comments poured out of her and I  found that I was just as happy to see her too. This feeling only grew as the bell rang and students filled the halls, more familiar faces from last year joining our growing crowd. “Whaaat?? Sweet, this totally makes my day,” another remarked, his tone the usual I’ve-just-woken-up drawl, “Oh man, that’s so cool you guys are here.”  Two other students from last year’s group ran up for hugs and hollered “we love coming out now and volunteering with the animals and weekend programs for kids.”  At times like this it is so clear why we do the work we do with youth.

We deeply admire the many classroom teachers and other YD providers with whom we collaborate daily. These are amazing folks who have dedicated a large portion of their lives and energy to helping change youth trajectories to positive directions. The daily work that many of them have in the classrooms and programs of planning and delivering the coursework and keeping 30-35 teens interested and moving towards their goals is quite a task!

 So this is where we in the Youth Development Department  at Hidden Villa come in. Our staff, farm, and wilderness are incredible resources for leveling the learning playing field by giving youth hands-on experiences outside their usual environment . Watching the eyes of a youth for the first time who is holding a banana slug or a newborn lamb or making soup from harvested organic vegetables is something that everyone should be able to witness. We are finding that creativity is also one of our biggest assets. As we build up our core programming and extend the network of schools and youth organizations we partner with, we are doing so with the express goal of being flexible enough to meet students, teachers, and classrooms at the level they need. But what does that actually look like?

It can sometimes take the form of tailored curriculum, like last week’s programs with Environmental Science classes on California biomes, Natural Resources and Carbon and Nitrogen cycles.  These International Baccalaureate level classes from Sequoia High are learning about the complex interplay of biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) factors that make life on earth possible.  As their teacher wrote to us after:

"Thank you so much for the amazing trip last Friday! The kids have been buzzing about it all day. Please send my thanks to Samantha and Spring.  I wanted to look into bringing the Health Careers Academy (HCA) students for an overnight trip in the spring. The academy focuses on wellness and is a pre professional program for kids who want to go into health. Most of the kids will be the first in their families to graduate high school and go to college."

 At other times our adaptability takes on a different form, and we seek direction from the students themselves.  Each year we work with the Redwood  Environmental Academy of Leadership (REAL) at Redwood High to provide retreats and workshops to empower student leadership and teach valuable life skills to these underserved youth. This begins each September with our first in-class program, one that always finishes with the same activity.  We ask them to anonymously write down a goal for themselves for the year.  “Where do you want to be in May and what do you want to have gained by then?” is our prompt, with no caveat that it be about grades or even school.  They write such goals as: “To be more direct and honest to people’s faces” and  “To graduate and be able to go on to nursing school” and “To be nicer to my Mom”. As the bell rings and each person heads outside, they leave these pieces of paper on a big sheet by the door, everyone’s hopes gathered in one place. It is not just a demonstration …we use these notes to focus all of our later workshops with these students, their input directing the kind of hands-on activities and support we offer throughout the year.

Links:

• Youth Development Program Offerings
• Participant Testimonials
• Fall 2012 Newsletter featuring Youth Development work

The room gets quiet after Sam asks, "How would you define discrimination?" Some of the youth slouch in their chairs, while others look up at the ceiling. A few hands slowly, hesitantly float into the air. Sam smiles and calls on a girl with a raised hand. "I think it's when you kind of pre-judge people because they are different than you." "Yeah," says Sam, "that's definitely a piece of discrimination. Does anyone else want to build on what she said?" A few new hands move into the air, a little bit faster this time. "I think its when you give people less things because of their race or gender or whatever," says a young man donning a Giants baseball cap." Yeah," say Sam, "let's build off of that."

As we move through the workshop, twenty youth from a mandatory Life Skills class reflect on what it means to discriminate and what it means to have prejudice. We move from one big group into 5 small discussion groups where, once we all settle in and the chairs stop squeaking, students begin to share stories about times in their life that they were discriminated against. A young woman's brow furrows as she remembers an incident when she was treated unfairly. The students begin to lean into the conversation, sliding to the edge of their chairs as they begin to share about aspects of their identities that are valued unequally by institutions, people they know, people they don't know and even one another. The range of emotion during these conversations is as great as the range of our different perspectives in the world, of the multiple experiences we've been a part of, witnessed, or even imagined. We are not only deconstructing "discrimination," "prejudice" or the "-isms," but most importantly we are helping young people to speak from their hearts, to speak from their own experiences and to listen, to listen carefully to the experiences of others.

Discrimination loses its potent blinding force, its razor sharp edge when we know one another and when we hear one another talk about who we are and what our lives are like. Conversations like this one force young people to challenge their own assumptions about one another and also about themselves. Guided reflection on the influence of external forces such as the media and institutions on a person's understanding of self empowers young people to claim their own identities, while also understanding the complexities of identity within unjust systems. When students see one another for real, when they let down their barriers, a magical thing begins to happen. Yes, you see smiles, tears, laughter, and all of those good cathartic emotions, but you also see students sticking up for one another, you see students speaking up about things that are unfair and you see students, many of the quieter students, reminding one another to speak from their own experience.

This is one of the many ways that Hidden Villa is providing hands-on opportunities for young people and people of all ages to make deeper and more meaningful connections to themselves, to one another and to gain the confidence to see themselves as agents of change. Thank you for your investment in empowering young people of diverse backgrounds to gain the skills, knowledge and open-mindedness they need to navigate the complex social and cultural fabric of their lives and become leaders committed to social justice in their own communities and beyond. Because of your support, we are able to support a continuum of learning opportunities for the next generation of bold and empathetic leaders.

Links:

• Hidden Villa's Youth Development Programs
• Hidden Villa's Blog
• Watch the Value of your Investment: Youth Development Video