Q: What is the Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Conference like?
A: The HC • HY Conference is an assembly-driven conference, so there is an assembly every day. The assemblies are to gather people as a community and inspire them in the youth development work that they do. There are also five opportunities to go to learning sessions, which are small groups led by an expert who has implemented the Developmental Assets in some unique and powerful way. The sessions will give the presenters a chance to describe their research or how they do what they do. All of these learning sessions are designed to strengthen the skills that attendees already have or deepen their understanding of the work of positive youth and community development. There are five different opportunities to attend learning sessions throughout the conference and twenty to twenty-two options that you can choose from at each one, but there are so many quality presentations that it’s pretty difficult to choose.
Another aspect of the conference is how we try to create space for participants to connect with others doing similar work. Educators connecting with educators, community development people with development people and so on. There will be cross-sector groups on different topics as well. We also try to accommodate making connections by having spaces designed for hanging out and holding informal conversations.
We have two features that are unique to this year’s conference. One is the Kids Against Hunger event on Thursday evening that will be a dinner and service-learning opportunity for all conference participants. The dinner will include an introduction to service-learning and, directly after dinner, participants will be packing meals for local people in need and to send to Africa, so there will be both international and local impact. Following the meal packing, there will be a short debrief and information on how to hold a service-learning event. Then on Friday night, the Tips and Tools for Real Conversation Between Youth and Adults event will introduce some tools that will help people engage in meaningful intergenerational conversations.
So, the conference has inspiration through the assemblies, strengthening and deepening through the learning sessions, and connecting through the different areas of interaction with other people.
Q: How is HC • HY a youth-centric conference?
A: It is not a conference that caters to or even targets youth as much as it incorporates youth in the planning. We have a national youth advisory panel that made a lot of decisions about the conference through e-mail and Skype. We also have a local youth community in Cincinnati that planned activities that will appeal to youth and allow them to be engaged in the conference.
One of the things that was important to the youth involved in planning was to provide some opportunity for just simply having fun. They felt that because people in the social services and development sector give twenty-four hours a day and 360 days a year, the conference should have a couple opportunities for fun. The Pit, which is a collection of games and fun activities, is one option. There is also an intergenerational dance planned for Friday night where participants will actually learn four different kinds of dance and then be given the opportunity to try the dances out.
Some of the informal discussion times are going to be focused on youth topics and some of the learning sessions will be youth-led. All the assemblies will have youth involvement, including drama presentations and emceeing. These are elements the youth have planned and said they would like to be a part of and that would add value to the conference for other youth participants.
Q: Who should attend the HC • HY Conference?
A: I can’t really think of anyone that couldn’t get something out of the conference. There’s a lot for parents—to facilitate being a better parent. School and community leaders will get a good picture of how to collaborate with others to make an impact in their community. YMCA and other youth-serving organization workers, administration people, and organization directors will get hands-on knowledge and theory upon which to strategize. There really is something for everybody.
Q: What will make this year’s HC • HY conference different from past conferences?
A: This is the first time every assembly will include some element of audience participation. We really don’t want conference participants to be an audience, we want them to be a member of this community—that’s the experience we are trying to create. This is not a conference that you come and watch, it’s a conference that you engage in.
This year we have a conference choir that anyone can participate in, a lot of shout-outs during assemblies, and areas where people can guide discussions. A lot of the breakthrough events will be discussions with some of the leading experts in the field, but the topics are wide open and dictated by the audience themselves, forcing the speakers to not be “canned.” Two learning sessions called “Close Encounters” will have Peter Block, one of the leading authors in community development, sit down with, potentially, just a handful of people and talk about community development. There aren’t many other places where you can get that kind of opportunity.
An idea the youth advisory group had was dividing all the participants up into “Asset Tribes.” This will be another chance for people to build camaraderie and make connections with other people. We are living in a time when it’s fairly difficult to do this kind of work, but one of the things that get people through is having a lot of people around you to support you.
Q: You’ve mentioned community development author Peter Block, but what other interesting figures will be at the conference this year?
A: Dr. Peter Benson is paired on Thursday with Dr. Maria Guajardo from Denver, Colorado. She has a fascinating personal story—she is the daughter of migrant workers and she made her way through the educational system and got her degree from Harvard. That journey itself is impressive, but her professional accomplishments, including the creation of a Colorado asset network, make her story truly inspirational.
Drs. Christopher Peterson and Nansook Park are presenting on Saturday morning. Dr. Peterson describes himself as an “old, fat, ugly white guy” but then he has this petite, beautiful woman with him and they play off each other very well. They are very humorous, which is not something you usually see in development or research. Dr. Peterson and Dr. Park have driven some of the pioneering efforts in positive youth development and they are incredibly knowledgeable. They’ve written more books than I’ve read in my lifetime.
Q: For those unable to attend the conference, what resources are there?
A: A week after the conference, mp3 recordings of all the assemblies and most of the learning sessions will be available online for download.
Q: Is there anything you want people who are attending the conference to know or consider?
A: If you are attending the conference, you made an investment to be there, and to get the most out of it, you need to share who you are, and your experiences, with others. Allow the other participants at the conference to interact with who you are and where you’ve been to see what you bring to the table. This is professional development in that you inspire, deepen, strengthen and connect with others in your work.
It is my hope that people coming to this conference see this as three days where they are investing not only professionally, but also personally. That it’s a time of rejuvenation and inspiration. That there is a spirit of service and helping people. That they will experience the joy of watching that light bulb come on in other people’s lives. That’s probably the reason they got into the [youth development] work in the first place and they have forgotten or it’s become cloudy because of the bueracratic programs or the personalities that they’ve had to deal with. The HC • HY Conference focuses on including that vision of who they are and why they got into the work in the first place.
