Youth Research Team

Show interest, not alarm

Julie develops and facilitates experiences for youth and the professionals involved with them, integrating ideas and strategies from experiential & liberatory education, youth/adult partnerships, and narrative-informed practices.  These experiences nurture culturally inclusive and socially just communities, youth leadership, and collaborative community building.

Highly regarded for her creative, interactive, and fun-filled style, Julie is known for her ability to engage participants in generative conversations that open space for new possibilities, make room for previously unheard voices, and blaze trails to meaningful outcomes.  Julie partners with very cool and talented youth and community workers who are skilled at facilitating change-full experiences that reflect each community’s unique identity.

WHAT WE DON’T DO!
• We don’t lecture
• We don’t know everything
• We don’t have a cookie-cutter for all groups/communities
• We don’t think we know better than you do

HOW DO WE DO THAT?

Outcome-oriented NOT model oriented

• We start by asking you questions like: Who do you need us to be so that your community can go on in its preferred way? How will you know this was worthwhile? What will you be doing differently as a result of our work together?
• You tell us what we’re aiming for; our job is to find ways to facilitate your goals, not force-fit your group into a specific methodology

Experiential and interactive NOT lecture (or worse—reading from a powerpoint!)

• Fun, multi-faceted, conversational

Participant-driven NOT expert driven

• We provide opportunities through activities and building conversations—you fill in the important stuff and influence the direction of the process

Relationship-based NOT manual based

• What else is there to say about that?

Youth-adult partnership NOT adult determined, adult led/youth tokenized

• Yeah, what youth participants say matters. A lot. We’re not here to tell you what to do. Our job is to ask new kinds of questions and provide experiences that bring forward what you do best and that promotes how you want to move forward

Doing with NOT doing to

• Have you ever been done to? We thought so—you know the difference then…