Case-Study: Working With Young Adults In

Their Power
Location: Houston, Texas

Project Desires
Support a client’s collaborative setup to address young-adult workforce and academic challenges by developing vehicles for more
just, equitable, and autonomous ways of working alongside young adults instead of doing for them.

Project Needs
• Explore how it looks for intergenerational collaboratives to work with youth adults in their power.

• Resource young adults to build out their own programming.

• Resource young adults in participatory research and consulting.

• Expand youth and young-adult-centered work through imagination work, case studies, and frameworks.

• Sca old frameworks, paradigms, and case studies with the client in real-time to support community desires and needs.

• Support client with clarity, dot-connection, and navigating the next steps.

• Developing a pilot fellowship (and ancillary items such as application materials and processes, decision-making material and
processes, graphics, curriculum frames, etc.)

Concepts and Tools

• Sca olding and resourcing

• Use of SEL, Healing-Centered work, and other youth power models

• Imagination work

• Facilitation

• Coaching

www.emcclartypllc.com for more resources.

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• Power-building

• Compassionate Capacity Building

Brief Summary
EMPLLC was hired by a collaborative focused on “opportunity youth”—de ned as young adults from 16-24 who are not in school
or working. As the practice began to dive into the work, it realized that most o the work was being done in a way that excluded
young adults from autonomy, decision-making, and economic participation.

One major question became, “How can we work with young adults on challenges young adults are encountering as colleagues?”

After speaking with young adults, EMPLLC conceptualized a pilot fellowship program for young adults between the ages of 16-24.
There was a strong desire for the program to be limited to young adults with lived experience. However, work was still nascent, and
there was no infrastructure to support them fully (and holistically). Consequently, the program was opened up to 16-24-year-olds at
large.

The application for the fellowship included a video and asked potential participants to give their take on the challenge. Did they
believe the challenge existed? How did they suggest organizations navigate the challenge if they did believe it existed? The
intention was to start framing the lived experience of young adults as expertise from rst contact. To recruit, the application was
sent to organizations on the ground working with young adults in multi-year programs, and participants were chosen by collective
votes from the Collaborative’s Steering Committee.

In addition to the participants, a young adult facilitator was hired and paid hourly to co-facilitate the group alongside EMPLLC. The
intention of the fellowship was to:

• Gather research from the young adults to support the Collaborative’s programming and work.

• Create a vehicle for collaborating and co-designing the Collaborative’s work led by young adults.

• Develop an opportunity for young adults to economically participate in revenue being generated around the work through grants
and contracts.

• Open career pathways by developing the facilitation skills of young adults so they can facilitate similar conversations in the future
and be paid.

Each month, 6 young adults of color ranging from ages 19-24 gathered online to learn di erent facilitation tools and practices,
practice on one another using their lived experience, and work toward a culmination project that would capstone their time together.

www.emcclartypllc.com for more resources.

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Participants also facilitated exercises and conversations during Collaborative meetings. The group also piloted a “listening session”
where other young adults were paid to share their experiences, wants, and desires with the group. Participants were paid a stipend
in the thousands for their time, talents, and expertise and resourced with facilitation materials.

EMPLLC developed a high-level curricular framework for the pilot using a number of frameworks, such as SEL and healing-
centered facilitation. However, individual meetings were co-designed with a young-adult facilitator. Each meeting was adapted to
meet the group's needs and what piqued their interest at that time. For the culmination project, participants were resourced to
decide what they wanted to say and what they wanted to work on. Two projects surfaced: A social media campaign and mixed
media story-telling.

For the social media campaign, they were resourced with a professional marketer and professional graphic designer. EMPLLC
supported and sca olded so that they developed all of the copy, creative design, and branding. A professional marketer and
graphic designer were also provided for the mixed-media storytelling. EMPLLC supported and sca olded so they were able to
develop materials for a large call to young adults, facilitate the development of content by young adults, curate that content, and
develop an intro.

This project was one of the most humbling but also one of the most ful lling. We’re still in contact with half of the young adults, and
2 or 3 have gone on to do additional facilitation. The Harris County Library System was kind enough to post the social media
campaign as a blog on their site. And a copy of the mixed-media storytelling can be found here. A comprehensive sense-making
document was also put together, documenting the process of the pilot, learnings, and recommendations.

None of this work would have been possible without all of the partners who shared calls to action throughout.

A Few Learnings

• There was more success recruiting participants from smaller organizations working on the ground that had personal, multi-year
relationships. Organizations with more sta and larger budgets tended to work with young adults in a much shorter time frame
and may not have had multiple contacts with young adults. Most of those who applied did so after personal encouragement from
a mentor. This evidenced a need for organizations to consider longer-term, more multi-touch programming.

• Developing a real-time mentorship program proved exceedingly hard. The pilot took place at a time when everyone was virtual,
and the need for mentors outpaced the mentors available. Moreover, mentors adept in healing-centered, young adult
empowerment models were being overextended while mentorship networks in the region were still developing and not online.
We’ve since explored peer mentor and group mentoring pilots.

www.emcclartypllc.com for more resources.

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• Fellows had di erent value systems that required everyone else involved in the work to interrogate assumptions. For example, all
expressed concerns about language, such as “opportunity youth.” Others interrogated the assumption that everyone has to work
or go to school. These moments of confrontation and questioning were the most enriching and personally shifted the direction of
EMPLLC’s work and focus. We’ve since worked with clients on working with young adults sooner, during conceptualization, and
before designing out programs or initiatives.

• A tremendous amount of time went into sca olding and resourcing so that young adults were able to have more autonomy in the
process. There were aspects where fellows could not co-design or build due to timing, such as developing the fellowship concept
or its curriculum. However, the pilot helped create a better understanding of what is needed in terms of time and resources to
build in the capacity for this to happen on initiatives moving forward. Where clients approach with fully baked initiatives, we also
have ideas on how to build processes that work backward to make sure co-designing and co-building with young adults happen.

You May Be Interested In Similar Work If…

You work on issues that, directly or indirectly, impact young adults and want to do the work in a way that unlearns ageism or
hierarchy. More speci cally, you want to do your work in a way that centers power, autonomy, and self-determination. Or, you are
currently working on a challenge for young adults and want to learn how to co-create or design alongside young adults instead of
for them.

If you nd you struggle to garner interest from young adults, want to work more transformatively, or need a thought partner to help
reimagine relationships with young adults. We may be able to support with strategy, facilitation, or imagination work. We have also
run youth and young-adult-centered research for clients through focus groups, surveys, and community events designed alongside
young adults.

Alternatively, you may be interested in this work but working within organizations, systems, or institutions for whom ageism is
embedded. We may be able to support education and facilitation to cultivate awareness and reimagine the work alongside young
adult facilitators. And resource unlearning with case studies, frameworks, books, and journal pieces.

Keywords
Youth, Young-adult, SEL, Community, Imagination, Facilitation, Workforce, Justice, Equity, Power-building, Self-Determination,
Agency

www.emcclartypllc.com for more resources.

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