Youth Work is Leading with

 While reading the article Pega wrote, it really showed me how important youth-led spaces are. Youth in Action is the perfect example of what the adult-youth relationship should look like. YIA is empowering their youth and helping them build off their own potential to reach their goals. When I look back at my own experiences being a youth in an after school program, I realize that I never had much control over the programs that were run or the things we did on a day to day basis. Looking at the ladder, I think the boys and girls club falls under assigned but informed with some tokenism because when donors came we had to be on our best behavior or they would select a handful of the "best" kids to parade in front of them. It was really just a space to keep us entertained until our parents got out of work. When a space is youth-led, there's more focus on individual experiences and the success of each youth outside of the space. Giving them power in that space will help them take power in the other spaces in their life. Hopefully, there will be more spaces like this as the youth development profession gets taken more seriously because everything we do really does impact our youth and their futures.

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