06 Mar Young Voices in Public Engagement

Participatory engagement programs that include children and young adults cultivates a sense of ownership and responsibility for the community, empowering them to become active local citizens who contribute to positive change. Learn about several recent projects where Connect the Dots centered voices of the next generation.

Involving children and teens in stakeholder engagement enriches the decision-making process and fosters a sense of connection to their communities and familiar spaces. Through playful activities, youth of all ages can contribute to participatory engagement and offer unique and imaginative insights to public-facing projects. Their uninhibited creativity can impact approaches to urban design, community development, and environmental sustainability. Youth often lack opportunities to feel empowered due to barriers that limit their access to decision-making processes and resources. A core value of Connect the Dots is to create inclusive engagement opportunities, which includes child-oriented and youth-driven engagement tactics evident throughout a variety of projects conducted in our region. Below we discuss the importance of each of those age groups and highlighted a few examples from projects where engaging kids & families and teens & young adults played a key role in providing input.

The Importance of Engaging Kids & Families

Integrating activities for young children during public engagement processes lowers the barrier to accessibility for others. By providing age-appropriate opportunities for participation, such as games or interactive activities, engagement becomes more accessible to the wider community and removes engagement barriers such as literacy and familiarity with technical knowledge and terms.

Involving children in the decision-making process or within engagement activities lays the foundation for cultivating informed and engaged citizens from a young age. Including children —especially younger children — also conveys the message that decision makers or project drivers value the perspectives of families. wo projects where young children and their families provided valuable project insights through playful learning experiences were for the Delaware River Trail Extension and Tacony Boat Launch

Delaware River Trail Lehigh Extension 

The Delaware River Trail Lehigh Extension project aimed to extend the Delaware River Trail north to Port Richmond while creating an inclusive and accessible walking and bicycling connection along the riverfront. Connect the Dots designed a nature themed public meeting, with participants moving around a “trail” of engagement stations, with each interaction and activity designed to be a “trail head” along the route. Interactive activities allowed participants to provide input by writing, placing stickers, completing “Madlibs,” mapping, talking to moderators, and drawing – which especially helped learners of all kinds and ages engage. Child participants were especially excited to draw and give input by placing stickers on our provided boards.

Tacony Boat Launch 

Connect the Dots collaborated with Riverfront North Partnership to lead community engagement efforts for the revitalization of the Tacony Boat Launch situated along the Delaware River Trail in Northeast Philadelphia. Phase 2 of the project involved creating interactive feedback opportunities for families in partnership with nature-play nonprofit Let’s Go Outdoors. These included nature-based children’s games and interactive feedback activities for families, a storytelling pop up around a bonfire at the local Tacony Library, and a family fun festival at Russo Playground with goats, local food, games, and project information. 

The Importance of Engaging Youth & Young Adults

Youth involvement in public engagement processes is essential for fostering a vibrant and inclusive society. Young people gain valuable skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication by participating in these processes. Their perspectives bring fresh ideas and innovative solutions to the table, ensuring that decisions reflect the needs of future generations. 

Youth often lack opportunities to feel empowered due to barriers that limit their access to decision-making processes and resources. When we think about where they spend the majority of their time — school, jobs, extracurricular activities — the culture and structure of those spaces are shaped by adults, leaving little room for youth to drive change in their everyday life. Our societal expectations and stereotypes about youth can marginalize their voices, leading to feelings of disempowerment and disillusionment with the ability to affect meaningful change.  Public engagement provides young people with a tangible space to understand how their knowledge and actions can have real, local impact on the people and spaces that they interact with on a daily basis. Two examples of projects where youth-led engagement played a pivotal role in understanding the community’s needs are Framing the Future of the Roundhouse and Aramingo Complete Streets.

Framing the Future of the Roundhouse 

As part of the Framing the Future of the Roundhouse project, Connect the Dots developed a Youth Ambassador program, in partnership with Ones Up. The project focused on understanding the vision that members of the Philadelphia community had for Philadelphia’s former police headquarters in Center City. Youth ambassadors (ages 16-21) from around the city were tasked with organizing their peers and communities to provide input and share their thoughts. The youth ambassadors held six events, creating a safe space for conversations about the meaning of the Roundhouse in the lives of Philadelphia youth and their families. 

Aramingo Complete Streets 

Connect the Dots is currently working with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, & Sustainability (OTIS) to redesign a one-mile stretch of Aramingo Avenue, aligning it with the City’s Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans. As part of the engagement process, the project team hosted a public meeting at a local rec center. This led to many parents and youth sharing their thoughts on how the street could be improved. This allowed for youth who bike and live in the area around Aramingo Avenue to have the opportunity to give their thoughts on traffic safety and the design of an area they live and play near.

Conclusion

Including the voices of children and young adults ignites opportunities for intergenerational dialogue, creating spaces where trust and understanding can be built between decision makers, adult leaders and youthful perspective. Inclusive participatory engagement programs with youth cultivates a sense of ownership and responsibility for the community, empowering them to become active local citizens who contribute to positive change. We look forward to building more interactions to include young voices in engagement.

Anneke Kat brings over 12 years of experience working with children and young adults in the United States and in Southern Africa. She developed and facilitated programming alongside youth and their community leaders which focused on academic support, civic engagement, and cross cultural & service learning. She currently serves as the Outreach Manager for Connect the Dots.

Sophia Peterson is an Associate working in data analysis and reporting on projects. She has seen firsthand the creativity and fresh perspective that youth bring to engagement activities, across multiple projects.

Learn more about Anneke, Sophia, and the Connect the Dots Team.