PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: Carasol Juvenil is a program of CARECEN that nurtures the capacity of youth to build community/power in the Pico Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The program interweaves youth leadership, community organizing and youth mentorship components to ensure the holistic development of a new, sustainable generation of community activists.
INTENDED PROGRAM GOAL: Helping students to take charge of their education and participate as authentic partners with adults in the decision making, leadership, and governance in and across their schools within the Belmont Zone of Choice.
INTENDED STUDENT OUTCOMES: What we want students to get from our program
- Powerful, loving self-concept: to build students’ sense of their own power and connection to the world around them.
- Full Self-Expression: to build students’ self-efficacy, interpersonal communication skills and leadership capacity.
- Building Co-creative Community: to build students’ ability to work together to invent and implement their own solutions, which have the potential to change the way community views youth, to shift laws, policies, practices related to youth, and to permanently alter institutional relations of power.
PROGRAM COMPONENTS: How we intend to reach our Student Outcomes
To build students’ capacity to reach Program Goal, the following three components have been created:
- Component 1: Youth Leadership Development
- Component Goal: Creation of a student organization on campus, run by and for youth, with a supportive, sustainable and team-oriented culture.
- Component Objectives: To offer students tools and coaching in the following areas:
- Effective listening, expression and communication
- Transformation of limiting beliefs and attitudes towards self and/or youth (positive self-concept)
- Development of students’ own organizational leadership skills
- Support student initiative and being effective at taking on specific leadership roles in their organization
- Component 2: Campaign Development
- Component Goal: Successful “win” to a short-term campaign, run by and for youth, with tangible results that students can see and of which they can receive the benefits.
- Component Objectives: To offer students tools and coaching in the following areas:
- Community research and assessment
- Issue identification and power analysis
- Strategy development and plan of action
- Education, organizing and mobilizing of other youth
- Component 3: Youth Mentorship
- Component Goal: Creation of a peer mentorship unit, run by and for youth, that functions to support youth in the student organization.
- Component Objectives: To students offer tools and coaching in the following areas:
- How to set and achieve their short term goals (in target areas of academics, personal self-care, relationships, community) and
- How to peer coach other students so that they can set and achieve their goals