Mar 23, 2021
How Diverse Groups of Youth and Adults Collaboratively Develop Identity Safety in a Community Setting: RESEARCH
The full article is available to read open access in the Journal of Community Psychology.
Foundry10 has partnered with Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) for the past five years to conduct research and support their summer camp program Y-WE Create. Y-WE Create is a week-long residential design camp where youth have the chance to express their creativity through sewing, jewelry-making, performance, and other meaningful activities. The programs at Y-WE aim to create a community of belonging for young women* and center young women of color and marginalized youth (*those who identify as women or girls or were assigned female at birth).
In a recent study on identity-safety at Y-WE Create published in the Journal of Community Psychology, researchers at foundry10 made the following recommendations for program developers and educators serving underrepresented youth:
- Program developers may want to incorporate activities that facilitate youth identity exploration and the roles they enact in their social environments.
- When adult mentors participate in creative risk-taking activities alongside youth, they can share differing life perspectives across the age spectrum. This gives youth the opportunity to define their own values with mentors and build their sense of self-worth.
- Offer youth additional support through one-on-one meetings and a quiet place for reflection. Acknowledging individual needs may help youth to meet the challenges of adolescence by providing supports that contribute to their personal growth.
The researchers — led by Anna Cechony, Mike Scanlon, and Jennifer Rubin — work with Y-WE to explore the elements that make their programming so meaningful and transformative for youth. Not only do foundry10 researchers study the program, they’re also embedded in the Y-WE community and participate in camp as mentors.
As the partnership has evolved over the past five years, so have our research directions. “Our partnership with Y-WE is just that, a true partnership. We have worked together over the last five years to build upon the initial respect we had for each other’s work and have built a really collaborative, generative relationship,” said Cechony. “In the first few years of coming to camp, we were a little bit more tentative around each other. We were figuring out communication boundaries, and how to participate in camp and add research without disrupting the beautiful process that they have built over the years.”
In the past, foundry10 and Y-WE have worked to explore youth perspectives on design-oriented careers, how to measure individual empowerment, and the role of mentors in reshaping personal narratives. The research questions that we investigate at camp change as our partnership and shared goals evolve.
“Y-WE Create has different goals and themes each time it’s run, and the research questions change along with them,” said Scanlon. “Y-WE works hard to make their programming for young women responsive to their needs, and at foundry10 we try hard to make the data responsive to the specific program. This means before camp starts we’re in close conversation with the folks who facilitate camp, and tailoring our questions to fit closely with camp programming.”
Working closely with members of the Y-WE community ensures that the research we do is meaningful for us, Y-WE, and the broader community.
“The research that foundry10 and Y-WE do together is impactful because it centers seeking to understand the youth experience through methods that align with program values,” explained Cechony. “For the wider camp and youth-serving community, this data is also really powerful. So many programs only allow young people to build connections with one or a few adults, but in Y-WE’s intergenerational community mentoring model, everyone at camp is learning from and with each other, from the youngest youth to the oldest mentor. This data shows the power in that for individual youth experience and the collective community that is co-created.”
In 2019, foundry10 explored the impact of identity safety at camp. The team’s findings were recently published in the Journal of Community Psychology. Here, we catch up with foundry10 Senior Researcher Jennifer Rubin on what identity safety means, how identity-safe contexts can help youth show up as their full selves, and how other program developers can use these findings to create identity-safe communities in their own programs.
What is the concept of identity-safety? Why is it important?
Rubin: Research suggests that environmental cues — such as physical features of the environment (e.g., diverse posters on the wall) or institutional policies (e.g., DEI initiatives) — may create an assumption that an individual’s treatment will be linked to one or more of their social identities.
When young people perceive an environment as threatening rather than safe, they may expect that their social identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) will evoke rejection and choose to conceal their authentic selves from others. Identity-safe contexts — settings that acknowledge differences in social identity and treat those differences as valuable — offset the possibility of threat by signaling that an individual is welcome within that environment. Unlike other settings that may evoke a colorblind perspective (i.e., not acknowledging race), identity-safe environments acknowledge variability in social identity and celebrate those differences as valuable sources of knowledge.
How do youth and adults cultivate identity-safety at Y-WE Create?
Rubin: We found that youth and adults developed identity-safety by practicing authenticity in daily interactions, engaging in programmatic activities that sought to understand youth’s identities, and facilitating dynamic communication across intergenerational friendships. As the community developed, youth and adults engaged in providing social support to sustain safety and engaged in personal growth opportunities through taking positive risks (e.g. participating in the camp talent show, taking a risk to make connections with new friends). These processes helped establish a community of belonging, ultimately encouraging youth and adults to develop feelings of trust and connection.
What do you think were the most surprising findings of this study?
Rubin: I think that one of the most interesting findings is the importance of collaboration in an intergenerational community of youth and adults. Y-WE Create is unique because it uses an intergenerational community mentoring model, meaning there are mentors of all ages (19–75+) who are working alongside youth through the support of staff and facilitators. We found that collaboratively establishing identity-safety through programmatic activities and open communication impacted youth experiences in important ways: youth described wanting to speak up and/or engage in difficult conversations because they perceived the community as welcoming rather than threatening; and youth described seeking out social support that nurtured their existing strengths and allowed them to challenge self-limiting beliefs about themselves. Spaces that offer community where everyone can show up as their authentic selves are particularly important for underrepresented youth who receive messages that they are “less than” majority groups.
What do you hope program developers take away from the findings of this study?
Rubin: We offer several implications for program developers based on findings from this research. First, identity-safe communities have the potential to encourage girls of color and other underrepresented youth to examine different histories that impact one’s experiences. Program developers may want to incorporate programmatic activities that seek to examine the cultural, historical, and personal contexts that impact an individual’s experience of the world.
Second, the intergenerational mentoring model worked to challenge power dynamics in youth-adult partnerships by having mentors participate in activities alongside youth. By capitalizing on differing life perspectives across the age spectrum, youth were able to explore their own values with mentors and build their sense of self-worth.
Finally, mentors recognized that some youth may need additional support through one-on-one meetings and a quiet place for reflection. Acknowledging individual needs may help youth to meet the challenges of adolescence by providing supports that contribute to their personal growth. We believe that considering these areas in programming — nurturing the development of introspection, challenging power dynamics in youth-adult partnerships, and tailored support — can help build safe communities for youth.
Read the full study in the Journal of Community Psychology: “Here I can just be myself”: How youth and adults collaboratively develop an identity-safe community across difference.
