Strategies for New York City Teens Influencing Public Policy

This report describes findings from a study that sought to understand how young people can become important players in the policymaking process. Youth civic engagement literature shows that there are low levels of civic and political participation among American youth, in part because there are few policy structures to support youth in community governance. Many youth programs that work to influence public policy have been designed in response to this, but evaluation of these programs has focused on the impact of participation on the individual youth themselves – their knowledge of a particular issue, self esteem, communication skills, and perceptions of self-efficacy – as opposed to measuring the impact that a particular youth campaign had on policy.

In an attempt to understand what the most effective strategies are for youth having a voice in public policy, the study focused on the supply and demand for youth input. On the supply side, we examined several New York City programs that work to increase the voice of inner city youth in policy in order to determine what have proven to be effective strategies for influencing policy. On the demand side, we sought to determine what policymakers want to know from youth and how the voice of young people can most effectively be heard and respected. The findings of the study will be used to inform the Youth justice Board, an after-school program of the Center for Court Innovation, that seeks to influence public policy related to juvenile justice issues.

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http://www.courtinnovation.org/_uploads/documents/Voice_Youth.pdf