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Andrea Ridgley MSW is the youth engagement and action project coordinator. Oonagh Maley MISt is project manager. Harvey Skinner PhD is principal investigator of the TeenNet Research Program based at the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto. Since 1995, TeenNet (www.TeenNetProject.org) has been a leader in research and knowledge exchange on integrating information technology and participatory action research for youth health promotion.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us And we ask ourselves 'Who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous, gorgeous?' And actually who are you not to be..."
Marianna Williamson, A Return to Love
Tiffany, 19 years, records herself singing Marianna Williamson's words. Quickly, her hand moves to the computer; she adjusts the levels of the base beat. This is her song. She created the melody, she created the beat, and the song is ready to record.
Between May and April 2004, over 700 young people, adults, service providers, service users and policy makers heard Tiffany and her youth group Peace Power rap, sing and converse about the challenges of being street-involved and strategies for making their community stronger. Tiffany and her group developed and performed their songs as part of an innovative initiative called Youth Voices. Based in the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Youth Voices is a project of the TeenNet research program (www.TeenNetProject.org) led by Dr. Harvey Skinner.(1) Youth Voices was established to develop processes and models for engaging youth in their communities. This article outlines Youth Voices' six phase EIPARS (Engage, Identify, Plan, Research/Reflect/Reward, Sustain) model and process used to engage youth, and examples are given to demonstrate the impact of the initiative locally and internationally.
Beginnings
The Youth Voices project evolved from TeenNet's research on using both low level (e.g. photography) and high level (e.g. Internet) technology to engage youth in health promotion.(2) An effective approach for engaging youth in issue identification is Photovoice. Developed by Wang et al,(3) Photovoice is a participatory approach where community members use photographs to communicate issues of concern to the broader community and policy makers. In 2000, TeenNet conducted an initial test of...