Community Excel youth development campaign was established in response to growing concern about youth. We are dedicated to contributing to better futures for all youth. We share with many the conviction that too many children and youth are at the risk of poor outcomes because opportunities are too few, too fragmented, too problem-focused, and too distant from family and neighborhood.

Our mission is to be both opportunistic and strategic on a national and local level in shifting the public debate and commitment from youth problems to youth development. Our goals are:

1) to make "what works" available in order for youth to be productive and involved citizens;

2) to increase the number of people, places, and possibilities available to young people;

3) to strengthen and support local systems in order to build a comprehensive youth development infrastructure; and

4) to increase public will to support positive development for all youth.

At the core of this framework are three basic tenets:

1) problem-free is not fully prepared -- preventing high-risk behaviors is not enough. Our expectations for young people must be high and clear. Positive outcomes should be defined and monitored as carefully as negative behaviors.

2) academic skills are not enough -- young people are engaged in the development of a full range of competencies -- personal, social, vocational, health, civic. Focusing on academic competence skews discussions of resource allocation across systems and of teaching and learning methodologies within systems.

3) competence, in and of itself, is not enough -- Skill building is best achieved when young people are confident of their abilities, contacts and resources and called upon by their communities to use their skills.

Meeting youths' basic needs for safety, structure, relationships, membership, independence and contribution is critical to the development of competencies. Attention must be paid to both the content of learning and the contexts in which the learning occurs.

This definition accurately describes youth development as a process that all young people go through on the way to adulthood. As the definition implies, it is a process or journey that automatically involves all of the people around a youth-family and community. A young person will not be able to build essential skills and competencies and be able to feel safe, cared for, valued, useful, and spiritually grounded unless their family and community provide them with the supports and opportunities they need along the way. Thus, youth development is also a process in which family and community must actively participate. Youth development is "what parents do for their children......on a good day."

Youth development, then, is a combination of all of the people, places, supports, opportunities and services that most of us inherently understand that young people need to be happy, healthy and successful. Youth development currently exists in a variety of different places, forms and under all sorts of different names.

People, programs and institutions involved in youth development are working toward positive results in the lives of youth. Some have clearly defined these desired positive results-or outcomes-in an attempt to more effectively work toward them. There are many efforts to define the outcomes of youth development, and while language may differ from place to place most express the results that most people want for their own children. These outcomes include but move above and beyond the academic skills and competencies which are the focus of most schools. Community Excel has identified those outcomes as the following:

Aspects of Identity  Areas of Ability 
A Sense of Safety and Structure
High Self-Worth and Self Esteem
Feeling of Mastery and Future
Belonging and Membership
Perception of Responsibility and Autonomy
A Sense of Self-Awareness and Spirituality
 Physical Health
Mental Health
Intellectual Health
Employability
Civic and Social Involvement 

There are a number of well-known factors in youths' lives which contribute to reaching these positive developmental outcomes. The Search Institute has identified 40 assets, internal and external, which form a foundation for healthy development of young people. The 40-asset framework covers eight categories (support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, constructive use of time, commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity) and provides communities a tool to measure these assets in their youths' lives.

People, programs and institutions who work with youth are engaged in youth development if there is strong evidence of the following practices:

Supports: Motivational, emotional and strategic supports to succeed in life. The supports can take many different forms, but they must be affirming, respectful, and ongoing. The supports are most powerful when they are offered by a variety of people, such as parents and close relatives, community social networks, teachers, youth workers, employers, health providers, and peers who are involved in the lives of young people.

Opportunities: Chances for young people to learn how to act in the world around them, to explore, express, earn, belong, and influence. Opportunities give young people the chance to test ideas and behaviors and to experiment with different roles. It is important to stress that young people, just like adults, learn best through active participation and that learning occurs in all types of settings and situations.

Quality services: Services in such areas as education, health, employment, and juvenile justice which exhibit: (1) relevant instruction and information, (2) challenging opportunities to express oneself, to contribute, to take on new roles, and be part of a group, and (3) supportive adults and peers who provide respect, high standards and expectations, guidance and affirmation to young people.
Youth development is not a highly sophisticated and complicated prescription for "fixing those troubled kids." Youth development is about people, programs, institutions and systems who provide all youth-"troubled" or not-with the supports and opportunities they need to empower themselves. For a nation with such a rich diversity of youth, this requires youth development in all shapes and sizes:

An adult who volunteers time to mentor or tutor a young person;
A school that partners with community-based organizations to keep its doors open until 10 pm and provide all youth a safe, supervised place to be with homework support, activities, physical and mental health services;
A leadership development program that offers rival gang members neutral territory where they can relate to one another as individuals and build skills;
A city government that engages youth in the policy making process through youth councils and youth positions in government departments;
A religious institution that provides youth access to computers and the necessary training; and
A local business which employs youth in meaningful and relevant work.
These are a sampling of the myriad types of youth development supports and opportunities which all too few youth are able to take advantage of. The challenge is to make such supports and opportunities the rule rather than the exception for all youth.