Cristina (Cris) Landa
Cris Landa
Colorado College
Participant in the 2011 ACM Student Symposium on Off-Campus Study
Bringing It Back to the Community: Youth Empowerment Theory and Practice
I went to the ACM Chicago Urban Studies program hoping that it would help me make sense of the complex issues facing adolescents. I learned that the problems I had seen working with a mentoring program in Colorado Springs were even more difficult to grapple with amidst the historically interconnected web of issues surrounding race, poverty, and violence in Chicago.
I interned for the Service Learning Department of Chicago Public Schools and was constantly confounded at how difficult it was to create simple changes amidst the bureaucracy. But luckily I found hope in the Human Rights and Social Justice in the Chicago Context seminar. The course purposefully acquainted us with organizations working for social justice in unique ways, and a striking number of organizations were rethinking the ways in which they conceptualized youth through youth empowerment. Youth weren’t seen as helpless kids, but emerging community activists.
When I came back to Colorado College (CC) I wanted to share this framework with others by creating a class, which proved to be a challenging project. But now, a year later, the course is being offered to CC students. After introducing the theory of youth empowerment, the course will cover three topics that affect youth: immigration, incarceration and sexuality. With a deeper understanding of these issues, students will examine organizations that apply youth empowerment to create transformation. Through required community hours spent with youth, students will think of ways to practice youth empowerment theory in their CC extra-curricular service programs with youth in the community.
I created a course to synthesize theory and practice for CC students actively working with youth in the community in order to increase their effectiveness and create lasting transformation. I could not have done this without the Chicago Urban Studies Program — it truly transformed my life, and I hope to continue sharing what I learned with others.
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