Taking Action to Support Marginalized Youth’s Access to Developmental Assets

Marginalized youth navigate systemic barriers such as racism, poverty, misogyny, and many other forms of oppression. It is important for practitioners to understand how marginalization can shape differential access to resources across domains like race and gender and what this means for positive youth development (PYD). We focus here on Developmental Assets®, which includes 40 assets across 8 categories that “influence young people’s development, helping them become caring, responsible, and productive adults.” The Framework includes both external assets, which are assets youth need that come from the world around them, and internal assets, which are assets that youth may have within themselves. 

Systemic barriers can hinder access to external developmental assets, which may then affect young peoples’ internal developmental assets. For instance, Black queer youth too often lack access to safe, supportive, and empowering school and community spaces due to discrimination, which means they are not experiencing critical external assets. Consequently, their sense of self, identity, and mental health may be negatively impacted, which can compromise their experience of internal assets. 

What Can Practitioners and Leaders Do? 

System leaders, practitioners, and educators are not positioned to stop all of the oppression that marginalized youth face; no individual can fix all of the systemic issues that hinder young people. However, supportive PYD spaces can have a positive impact on youth. Practitioners can control the spaces that their organizations or agencies have constructed to make sure young people can further develop their external assets in those spaces, which may lead to stronger internal assets. 

Organizations can help marginalized youth have better access to developmental assets by:

• Understanding how youth are currently being served;
• Understanding the barriers youth face;
• Taking concrete steps to ensure access to developmental assets.  

The following three prompts will help you consider how your organization is addressing the three items above. Reflect and act on these prompts: 

1. What do I know about the young people in my space? 
Do I understand their culture? Do I understand the histories of the communities I serve? Do I understand how their different identities might intersect?

Understanding the communities you serve is critical to being able to support youth. You cannot create truly safe and inclusive spaces or serve as supportive adults if you lack awareness of the assets communities have to offer, as well as the barriers they face and have faced. An activity such as community asset mapping may help you learn more about the communities you serve. 

2. Do all young people who enter this space feel safe, accepted, and included? 
Have adults in my space directly asked all youth how this space is serving them and how it can improve? Has our organization/agency ever measured this, formally or informally? Are there areas where our organization could improve? What should our organization continue to do?

In order to make sure your organization is safe and inclusive for all youth, look to the most marginalized groups that you serve. Examining your existing data about the marginalized youth you serve may make it possible to see how their experiences differ from those who may make up the majority of a space. 

• For organizations that have access to quantitative measures such as surveys, this may be as simple as disaggregating data. For instance, is there currently a way to discern between the experiences of disabled versus abled youth in your program? What about transgender versus cisgender youth, or girls versus boys?
• For organizations that gather qualitative feedback, such as one-to-one check-ins or written youth reflections, making space for youth to discuss their complex identities in the context of your space may be helpful. Are youth currently encouraged to discuss their complex experiences, or are they usually only asked to discuss one axis of their experience (such as only being Black or being a girl)? 
• Even in the absence of feedback or survey data about a program, engagement metrics may help your organization get a broader sense of inclusivity. Do some groups seem to be underrepresented in your space, compared to the local community? Are there some types of young people who tend to opt out of or leave your programs, and if so do you have a sense of why? 
• It is important to find ways – whether qualitative or quantitative – to gather and examine youths’ perspectives on their own experiences. Staff can also take time to reflect on aspects of organizational culture that may impact whether marginalized youth feel safe, accepted, and included. Search Institute’s Relational Culture Checkup offers one example for guiding these reflective conversations.

3. Is my organization a space where all of the young people we serve can have access to various external developmental assets? 
Do we know if all young people in this space feel supported? Do they feel empowered? Have we created clear boundaries and expectations in this space? Do all young people have constructive ways to use their time here?

Explore Developmental Assets and determine if your organization is addressing the four categories of external assets. Again, one practitioner or organization cannot stop all of the oppression that a young person will face in the world. But in your organization, you may be able to make sure that your space is safe and inclusive for all young people. Even having access to one welcoming space can be transformative for marginalized youth who may not feel safe in many other spaces. By creating spaces that nurture and grow young people’s strengths we are providing opportunities to further expand on the assets they already have and encouraging them to develop the personal skills, values, and self-perceptions young people need to make good choices, take responsibility for their own lives, be independent, and thrive.  

LaShanda Harbin is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Before coming to Madison in 2021, LaShanda earned an MA in Urban Education Policy at Brown University and a BA in both African American Studies and Education from Bowdoin College. She has spent the last decade working in various educational spaces in Chicago, New England, and now Wisconsin. Her independent research focuses on improving school safety for Black queer and transgender youth. LaShanda is one of Search Institute's 2024 Summer Scholar Fellows.