Innovation Center: A Forum Interview with Hartley Hobson, Vice President

The Innovation Center’s work, rooted in the positive community youth development approach, began with an exploration of the intersection of youth development and community development. That area has expanded into other pairings that form the focus of their work, including youth
governance and decision making; youth development and community development; youth, technology and community; youth engagement and evaluation; and youth development and civic activism. A wellspring for fresh ideas and experiential learning, a link to new partners, and a catalyst for positive change in the way youth development takes place — the Innovation Center fosters and strengthens the best thinking and practice in the field by exploring the boundaries or intersections of youth, community and organizational development. Hartley Hobson, Vice President, spoke to the Forum about the work of the Innovation Center and the Forum frameworks.

Forum: The mission of the Forum for Youth Investment is to increase the quality and quantity of youth investments
and youth involvement. This can be broken down into
a four agendas:

1. increasing the quantity of investments in youth;
2. increasing the quality of investments in youth;
3. increasing the quality of youth involvement; and
4. increasing the quantity of youth involvement.

Which of those agendas would you prioritize highest,
and why?

HH: It’s hard to pick one. We have a lot of work around
the youth involvement piece; but that directly relates to
investments. One of the key qualities is involving youth
in what the investments are. When you talk about quantity,
on a community level, do we need a new after school
program? Do we need something in this neighborhood
that has no resources. Even when you talk about quantity
it intersects with the idea of involvement. I think the
issues of involvement directly impact the issues of quality
and quantity of investments.

Forum: We also frame organizations according to where they fit within what we call "arenas of action," i.e. research, practice, advocacy, philanthropy, policy and public will/communications. How would you describe the
Innovation Center in reference to these arenas?

HH: I think right now our work is largely around the
intersection of research, practice and philanthropy
with the governance work we’re doing. We also doing
some advocacy work with the At The Table Web site. [In
addition, we are] advocating for youth involvement in
governance, not in your face legislative advocacy, but
more policies and practices.

In terms of philanthropy, we don’t give out large
amounts of money, we do pass-throughs, and think more
about affecting the philanthropic field. A lot of our
research and evaluation is targeted at informing funders.

Forum: If you had an opportunity to present a youth policy agenda to the President of the United States, what would you put forth?

HH: I think it would be very similar to the kind of stuff
the Forum would talk about; positive youth development,
diversifying our approaches and opportunities for youth.
The engagement part would be a big piece. Any youth
policy has to have young people as a key part in formulating
it. That would be mirrored at the community level.

A youth policy would need to create opportunities for
young people to be involved in various community organizations, not just as recipients but as meaningful participants. Generally, a positive youth development approach is the overarching agenda we would want. We don’t have specific policies we’re pushing.

Forum: If a foundation board asked for recommendations on how to spend a million dollars, what would you recommend? Why?

HH: In all of our work we try to get a focus on lower
income disadvantaged communities. We would recommend
they use an asset-based approach to make the decision
while involving young people as partners. Lots of my answers are principle based rather than prescriptive.
Get a diverse group and let them figure out how to use it.
It’s more about facilitating and providing opportunities
for people to learn, make decisions and plan together than
doing something on our own.

Forum: If the National Academy of Sciences’ Forum on
Adolescence asked you to set their research agenda, what
would you set? Why?

HH: There have been so many meetings on this lately.
Obviously we’ve got a big agenda we’re hoping to push forward in the youth and decision-making field on the
impact of youth involvement on organizations and communities. Definitely there’s a whole set of questions in
that area that really need research behind them in order
for the practice to follow.

The other thing that has come up a lot in our work is
the issue of identity for young people. We’ve been exploring
this a lot in our activism work, with the idea that most
youth programs shy away from dealing with issues of identity. Ethnic and sexual identity are hard to talk about
[even though] that’s one of the key developmental trajectories that young people are going through. One of the
things we’ve been exploring is how can community engagement whether it’s service or out-there activism, give young people opportunities to explore their community and personal and political identity.

The last thing I’d propose, related to both of those
issues — maybe one step above them – is what are the
youth worker competencies that need to be in place in
order for youth workers to partner with youth through
those processes? How do we operationalize it.

Forum: Where do we have good research?

HH: I think practice is always ahead of research. Certainly we have research on positive youth development, but this still hasn’t been translated into funding practice; so much of the funding still goes to prevention. So much of programs are still focused there. It’s a matter of changing habits, incentives.

Forum: If you were able to pull together the top organizations that invest time, energy, and resources in youth, and they were willing and able to work together, what would you want them to do?

HH: I guess two things. One, if I were able to get them all together, one of the things I’d want them to do is look at their commonalities and differences, where they overlap,
where there are gaps, and I think [that’s]what the Forum
is trying to do. I don’t think we think of it as a field but
a bunch of different [organizations], so the approaches
are scattered.

The other thing I’d want them to do comes from pieces
of our work, is generally look at the ways to maximize
the benefit of the resources that young people can bring to
the table. Especially with teens, we need to really look at
ways they can be meaningfully engaged in the community,
whether that’s through education, work, or leadership
opportunities. A lot are doing it, but I’d want to look
at how we can do better.

Forum: Many Americans report that life has gotten worse for teenagers in the last 50 years – a period in which they report that life has gotten better for people on welfare, minorities, and other groups. Do you agree with them?

HH: It’s so hard to generalize, and easy to put on your rose-tinted glasses of yesteryear. Things were a lot worse for a lot of people back then. You look at the service movement . . . [young people are] volunteering more than they ever had,. I think young people today speak their minds more.

Forum: What is the biggest reason to be optimistic about youth today? What is the biggest reason to be pessimistic?

HH: I think one reason to be concerned right now is
the lack of attention to issues of poverty in families
and communities and it’s impact on young people. The
numbers are going to stay the same or grow, especially
in the current political context. There are lots of positive
things. I feel like in our fields, the topic of youth involvement is coming up more and more, in some strange
places, which I think is great. To me that says somehow,
the ideas are out there moving on their own. I think
that’s positive.

Read More...

What Kids Can Do: A Forum Interview with Barbar Cervone, Executive Director

August 2001 FYI Newsletter (This 15-page PDF document will open in a new browser window. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to download this file.)

The Forum for Youth Investment. (2001, August). "Innovation Center: A Forum Interview with Hartley Hobson, Vice President." Retrieved from www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/hobsonh.pdf