Youth Empowerment: Exploring the Impacts of Programs
What Is Youth Empowerment?
Youth Empowerment is the process of providing kids and teens with opportunities to use their innate abilities, potential, and talents for personal growth and societal progress. It involves encouraging them to take risks and forge their own paths, gaining confidence through skill acquisition, and inspiring others to follow their lead.
Self-Esteem
A person’s self-concept, or beliefs about himself, is a major driver of a sense of confidence and hope. Self-esteem can be influenced by many things including parents, teachers and coaches. It also depends on the experiences a person has in his life.
A high level of self-esteem can lead to a stronger belief in one’s own abilities and a willingness to move out of one’s comfort zone. Getting involved in community activities, helping others and volunteering can all help to build self-esteem.
Youth empowerment programs often involve a democratic decision-making process that incorporates youth councils, committees or other structures where youths and adults work together in leadership roles. This review explores the impacts of these programs on primary and secondary outcomes.
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is an important part of youth empowerment. Kids and teens with confidence feel able to handle difficult situations and try new things without fear. This helps them stay resolute when they face challenges, especially those that are related to their academic and social life.
This is possible only if they are encouraged and offered inspiring ideas, opportunities and critical awareness to maximise their potential. A mentor is an invaluable ally in this context, and can help them develop confidence through positive reinforcements and guidance. They can also help them identify their strengths, which will encourage them to keep building their self-confidence.
Self-Awareness
Developing self-awareness is essential for youth empowerment. This involves understanding one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors, including how they affect others. It also involves being conscious of one’s strengths and weaknesses, values, beliefs, and goals.
A recent study suggests that focusing on self-awareness, along with resilience and psychological wellbeing, can enhance positive youth development. However, more research is needed to understand how best to stimulate self-awareness.
To increase your students’ awareness, ask them to keep an emotion journal where they record their daily emotions. This helps them identify their emotions and allows them to see patterns.
Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is the ability to live in accordance with your values and aspirations, overcoming internal and external obstacles. It involves choosing the right habits and routines (external aspect) while mastering your emotions, thoughts, and impulses (internal aspect).
Start by setting goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. It may also help to make them small, especially at first, such as committing to reading one leadership book a week or doing ten pushups every night.
Be sure to reward yourself for each success. And don’t give up!
Self-Reliance
Developing self-reliance is an important step in becoming an empowered youth. This can be done by letting kids have more responsibility in the household and encouraging them to take on challenging tasks that help them build their self-confidence. You can also encourage kids to learn how to make their own decisions based on the facts and not just opinions.
This study adds to the growing body of research on adolescent autonomy by investigating the interplay between self-reliance, perceived social support and help-seeking. The results show that higher levels of self-reliance are associated with lower perceived social support and a greater hindrance to seeking help.
Self-Advocacy
Self-advocacy is a key aspect of Youth Empowerment. This means teaching your child how to express their strengths, needs and opinions to others. It also involves helping them understand their rights and how to advocate for those rights when necessary.
It’s also important for youth to learn how to identify what triggers them and the coping strategies they can use to help manage those triggers. Developing this understanding can help them understand why it is important to share those triggers with their peers or mentors who may be able to provide support.
Self-Leadership
Cultivating empathy in youth can help them develop the skills needed to become successful and compassionate leaders. Empathy includes learning to put yourself in another person’s shoes and consider their point of view. It also encourages compassion and courage.
A key component of self-leadership is knowing where to direct your energy. For example, if you are tired, you may need to renew yourself by taking time out or by getting adequate sleep.
Trying to lead when you are emotionally, spiritually or physically drained won’t yield the results you want. Rather than attempting to “wring” leadership out of youth, meet them where they are.