Engaging and Empowering Aboriginal Youth: A Toolkit for Service Providers

Not a week goes by without a negative news story reporting the rates of problem behaviors among Canada's aboriginal youth. These statistics don't tell the whole story, and the paradigm must shift from focusing on deficits to a more strengths-based approach. Engaging and Empowering Aboriginal Youth presents a wide range of guidelines, strategies, templates, and case studies for those who work with aboriginal youth. Divided into five sections, this toolkit • provides a historical context for understanding the challenges facing aboriginal youth and makes a case for the importance of building youth engagement and empowerment; • offers a series of assessment tools to help identify the starting point for change; • identifies four key tenets of effective programming with aboriginal youth: understanding and integrating cultural identity, increasing youth engagement, fostering youth empowerment, and establishing and maintaining effective partnerships; • highlights challenges and opportunities in working with partners in the educational system; • offers a range of considerations for program evaluation and other types of research. A guide for frontline service providers, facilitators, educators, community partners, and researchers to adapt or develop programs, Engaging and Empowering Aboriginal Youth combines conceptual guidelines and practical strategies.