The most critical aspect of the youth-led community work of Community IMPACT! is that it is location-specific. The youth leaders, who work with our organization, generally live, work, and go to school in our community-a community of high crime, failing schools, poverty, and practically no economic infrastructure.
For our youth, and presumably other at-risk youth, there seems to be a particularly strong paradox about their neighborhoods: At one glance, the neighborhood is the locus of all things bad in their young lives and at another glance it is a source of pride and power. I asked one of our youth leaders who had expressed particular pride in her community about this apparent paradox. I asked her-a 15-year-old who lives in an area known by the disturbingly poetic moniker of "The Bottoms," had been raped by a local drug dealer, had seen, just months before, a friend shot and killed in front of her house, has drugs and violence all around her, and is a student at a failing public high school-why she expressed such loyalty to her community. She said, "I love ~the neighborhood! because I grew up over here. It's where I started to learn life's lessons. I know what I know because of all of that." Essentially, good or bad, she saw her neighborhood and experiences as components of her self.
When Prilleltensky and Fox say, "Context is paramount," they simply stated what I feel to be the most critical component of engaging young people in community action. It is in communities, like the one that has preyed upon the youth as previously mentioned, that community change is most strongly paired with personal change, that power and influence in the community represent power and influence on the individual level. In other words, if I am a young person advocating for the improvement of my own failing school, I am also advocating for the improvement of my own Anderson Williams is the program director at Community Impact! Nashville. Community Impact's mission is to "to mobilize neighborhoods-youth, families, businesses and organizations-to increase educational and economic opportunities for young people.