Community Partnership and Youth Leadership
Our Stoneleigh Youth Advocacy Fellows reflect on why community partnership and youth voice are essential components of effective advocacy.
Youth perspective allows people to see how juvenile legal system involvement, foster system placement, over-policing, detention, and family separation affect young people’s development. Their lived experiences bring authenticity and urgency to movements because they are speaking from personal experience rather than observation alone.
When young people stand in solidarity with one another, adults are often more willing to listen because youth can display a united front and provide a unique perspective on issues often discussed only through statistics, policies, or stereotypes. Youth also bring creativity, digital advocacy skills, peer outreach, and community knowledge that the typical adult isn’t hip to. Youth know what’s relevant and what's important to their peers; their close connection to the issues and their knowledge can strengthen organizing efforts and push movements forward.
Providing young people with the tools to speak out, advocate, and lead movements is essential. Their voices are often authentic and candid, and helping them refine their communication skills can ensure their messages reach their stakeholders and drive meaningful change. Collaborating with young people and mutually learning alongside them can and will be one of the most effective things organizations can do to further build the movement around keeping kids safe and in their communities.
Throughout my Stoneleigh Youth Advocacy Fellowship at Juvenile Law Center, I have had the opportunity to see these principles in action through intentional partnership and collaboration with youth leaders, community organizations, and local law schools in the Philadelphia area. One way in which I have brought communities together to work on issues our legal staff are addressing is through expansive and intentional community outreach. As someone with lived experience, I bring a perspective that cannot be learned from research alone. Leading outreach efforts allows me to build relationships grounded in trust, ask informed questions, and help ensure that the voices of young people most affected by these systems remain at the center of policy conversations and reform efforts. I have been able to support both the Debt Free Justice Campaign as well as the team working to eliminate trying youth as adults through researching and connecting with organizations across the country to learn about their advocacy efforts, direct services, and experiences supporting youth impacted by the legal system. Through interviews, relationship-building, and information gathering, I have helped strengthen our understanding of transfer policies and identify opportunities for collaboration and reform. I utilize those same skills to connect with local youth diversion initiatives in Ohio to support policy reforms to eliminate costs, fines, and fees for youth and families. I have been able to identify effective alternatives to incarceration, strengthen community-based supports, and promote interventions that keep youth safely at home and connected to their communities. Across each of these projects, community partnership and youth leadership have remained central to identifying problems, developing solutions, and advancing reform.
No single organization can transform these systems alone. Lasting change requires legal advocates, direct service providers, community organizers, families, and young people working together toward a shared vision.
Youth engagement emphasizes the real impact these issues have on young people and their communities. When youth engage in movement work and show that they care enough to take action, it allows them to take ownership over their futures and show legislators, adults, and others in positions of power that they understand what is happening to them and are willing to stand against harmful systems.
