ABSTRACTYoung people, I believe, are the future of every society because they are the ones who will inherit our mistakes and who can potentially drive the change that we all aspire to, through their ideas, creativity and belief. Yet all too often they are marginalised, disregarded, even demonised. In Tanzania, 50% of the population is under the age of 18 years but they are rarely given a voice. This thesis reports on an experiment aimed at giving a voice to a group of marginalised young people in Northern Tanzania – former street children living in the town of Moshi, being cared for by an organisation called Mkombozi. The aim of the research was to investigate whether participatory radio converged with new ICTs, such as mobile telephony and the internet, could be effective communication tools to enable Mkombozi strengthen its youth empowerment and community engagement agenda and thereby help it move from being a ‘provider’ of services to a ‘facilitator’ that helps the community to bring sustainable change. The four young people who took part in the experiment were given free rein to make a radio programme about street children, backed by my technical expertise as a radio journalist. The programme was broadcast on a regional radio station and the audience was invited to take part in a live discussion using the phone, text messages and email. The results showed this to be an effective way of empowering the participants by giving them a voice to articulate their hopes and dreams, by inspiring them with self-confidence and self-respect and by allowing them to formulate their own demands for a better life. The programme they made provoked an overwhelming audience response, which connected the street children through dialogue with the community and engaged them in finding solutions to the issues themselves. Subsequently, there was a widespread consensus on the need for more participatory youth programming and investigation into how these communication tools might be developed further in order to find sustainable solutions at the grassroots level rather than through a ‘top-down’ approach.

The scale of the sustainability crisis is mounting exponentially as human development pushes the socio-ecological system closer to its limits. 12 to 18 year olds, who are in a formative life stage, are critical stakeholders in the success of addressing this sustainability challenge. This study explores the role of nature camps as powerful platforms for empowering young people towards sustainability. It begins by creating a conceptual framework to identify, define and design youth empowerment towards sustainability (YES). This is then used to identify relevant current practices and activities in the field through qualitative interviews with nature camp practitioners. A focus group is held to trial the YES Framework and collect suggestions for designing camps. Through thematic analysis, five key themes are distilled which link outcomes of camps to addressing specific sustainability issues. The study concludes that nature camps already empower young people towards sustainability, though neither explicitly nor strategically. Based on these findings we see an excellent opportunity to bring together existing knowledge from the field, combined with the YES Framework, to support the creation of nature camps which can empower new generations of young people to engage in strategic sustainable development.

Thesis ( M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2016 / The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Youth Empowerment Subsidy Tax Incentive emanating from South Africa’s Employment Tax Incentive Act of 2013, dedicated towards reducing youth unemployment. The scheme targets youth in the ages of between 15 and 29. The research used Triangulation Research Design approach, and questionnaire, interview and observation were used for data collection. These were statistically and thematically analysed. The results showed that the scheme lacked advocacy, and the people were not well informed or involved in planning the subsidy scheme. The study highlighted that people were eager to take part as long as the procedures were clearly feasible and well communicated. YESI vacancies were not advertised stating the type of programme that might have been confused with learnerships.

This project employs participatory action research methods in efforts to create a community specific environmental curriculum for the high school age youth at the only Jain faith community in the North Texas region. Aligned with the community’s goals, the youth led in deciding, creating, and carrying out initiatives that were aimed at increasing the level of awareness about environmental issues amongst community members. The research done by the youth aimed at looking at environmental issues through the lens of Jain doctrine. The final creation of a curriculum as a living document to be used by the youth in efforts to promote critical thinking skills and class discussion continues the participatory model. The curriculum encourages experiential and interpretative learning, which grants ownership of the topics to the youth themselves and ultimately empowering them to learn more and spread the importance of being environmentally friendly.

Adolescents living in peri-urban settings in South Africa face multiple challenges to realising their own health and wellbeing. A lack of opportunities exists for young people to gain practical skills and the self-efficacy necessary to address these challenges. One area in which they have the potential to make an impact is that of water-related disease. In this context Jive Media Africa, a media agency with a focus on health communications, initiated the Hip Hop Health project. The project made use of hip hop centred community music making to enable 60 young people from three schools in peri-urban communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to share, with their broader communities, findings from research tasks that they had undertaken in the area of water and health. This qualitative case study explored the affordances of this community music making process for the adolescents involved. The study employed thematic analysis of thick descriptions of video excerpts, song lyrics and focus group transcriptions, drawing strongly on a Freirean construct of conscientisation and on youth empowerment theory. This research suggests that the writing and performance of hip hop songs empowers young people to engage with complex issues affecting their health and wellbeing. Through this process they gained hope for their futures, as individuals and as a community. The overarching theme of empowerment is supported by three subthemes, each of which was facilitated by the creation and performance of hip hop songs. In ‘becoming’, young people gained knowledge and were empowered as individuals. Through ‘belonging,’ the learners forged mutually supportive relationships with their peers, families and the broader community. Finally, through ‘believing’, young people began to conceptualise the future as holding hope and possibilities, based on their learnings and the experiences of the process. In this sense, empowerment was seen to take place at both an individual and a community level, and demonstrated elements of building critical consciousness through cycles of action and reflection. The findings hold relevance for programmes that seek to address other issues impacting adolescent health and wellbeing by empowering participants through community music making using hip hop and rap. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / University of Pretoria / Music / MMus Musicology / Unrestricted

Developmental challenges in the transition to adulthood call for a process of empowerment that supports young people in guiding themselves and building capacities toward adult commitments and roles. The purpose of this study is to investigate empowerment in emerging adulthood, aiming to develop interventions to promote college student developmental outcomes, particularly in career exploration processes. A process of theory construction generated an innovative model of developmental empowerment in the transition to adulthood. Empowerment is conceptualized as a systemic process that emerges through the ongoing interaction between individual and relational environment. Empowerment constructs include personal agency and sense of purpose (as internal experiences), and mentoring and engagement in community (as external experiences). In the first study, a survey investigated empowering experiences in college among Virginia Tech students (N= 255). The findings support the theoretical model, confirming the salience and interdependence of the four main empowerment constructs. Preliminary evidence suggests relevant connections among the empowerment constructs and outcomes such as definition of life goals and career identity. Additionally, qualitative findings offered insights about the role of mentors and community in relation to empowerment. In its second phase, the research project narrowed the focus to study how the empowerment framework may be used to support the process of career exploration in college. The final study integrates the conceptual model and findings from the first study in a participatory design-based intervention for Virginia Tech first-year students exploring career options (N=126). A series of workshops generated an extensive data collection, yielding further investigation about empowerment, definition of life goals and career identity. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis demonstrate that the intervention improved scores for agency and purpose, besides improving student career adapting responses, major decidedness, and progress in career choice. Participants also advanced self-knowledge and purpose-driven orientation, and developed personal criteria for choice of major and career. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the transition to adulthood, young people need to learn how to make autonomous decisions, guide themselves, and build capacities to commit to adult roles and responsibilities. Deciding a career and pursuing education are good examples of tasks requiring self-knowledge and empowerment in this period. In this dissertation, we present studies about empowering settings to support development in this period of life, in particular for college students. Besides presenting a model of empowerment which includes internal processes and experiences in community, we propose a series of workshops using design techniques to empower and guide students exploring career options.

Master of Science / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen S. Myers-Bowman / The current study focuses on qualitative data collected from youth and adults in two rural Kansas communities. The focal point of analysis was youth and adults' answers to questions about their experiences working with one another within community-based programs, specifically questions regarding youth's feeling of empowerment within the context of the program. Lerner's theory of developmental contextualism provided a framework for understanding how youth-adult relationships contribute to the development of youth empowerment. Youth voice, a construct related to the youth empowerment literature, appeared in the participants' responses across program sites. Common themes across settings were that teens who had been involved in the program the longest felt especially empowered, that youth became more responsible as a result of participating in the program, and that adults in both program sites fulfilled the six adult roles for youth empowerment that have been established in the research literature. Finally, three constructs significant in the youth development literature (confidence, connection and compassion) emerged as themes in relation to the experiences of the young people in the program. Implications of this study include exploring the impact youth-adult relationships have on adults and investigating how teens as role models or mentors for "littles" impact their feeling of empowerment. Suggestions for replication of this study are also given.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / This research was an investigation of the impact of the youth development fund in the Plumtree district - a case study from 2010 to 2012. The study intended to show the impact of the fund on the major problem of youth unemployment. In this study, 40 youth entrepreneurs who benefited from the fund were used as research subjects. The main research instrument was a questionnaire. It focused on the situation before the funding in 2010 and after the funding in 2012. The research established that there was a significant increase in employment, training became more widespread and there was a backlog in payment of national taxes. From these findings, the study recommended that funding be increased, training be maintained and tax awareness campaigns be started.

In South Africa, the majority of youth entering emerging adulthood find themselves in a protracted struggle to access further education, training or to secure their first decent job. The purpose of this multi-case study is to deepen the understanding of how capability measurement approaches and tools can empower marginalized youth to better understand their aspirations and map their way through emerging adulthood and out of poverty. This research aims to deepen the understanding of youth's experience utilizing 'Poverty Stoplight'; a poverty measurement and capability building instrument that utilizes a self-assessment survey and mentorship methodology. The researcher utilized a youth-focused participatory approach in conducting focus groups and in-depth one-on-one interviews across five marginalized communities in the Western Cape to gain insight into their experience using the tool, their ability to envision their future selves and develop their aspirations. What emerged from the data were insights into the youth's aspirations, the perceived enabling factors and impediments towards their aspirations and their experiences utilizing Poverty Stoplight. This process enabled youth to genuinely reflect and assess their situation, and have the opportunity to define their aspirations. Overall the Poverty Stoplight programme was experienced as empowering by participants, with several implications for the programme pertaining to data accessibility, communication, mentorship and solution sharing, as well as the importance of youth-specific participatory approaches. Aligned to this, the findings yielded several recommendations pertaining to providing support and enabling opportunities for emerging adults to realise their aspirations. Despite the limitations of this research, this study is relevant for stakeholders in South Africa and globally as it examines the critical issue of youth development, with a focus on the ability of young people to attain their aspirations. Further, it analyses the capability measurement approach as a means to ensuring young people can better understand and plot their way out of poverty, making the most of their individual capabilities and attributes within the broader structural and systemic challenges they face. This exploration of practical tools and methodologies being developed and utilized by pioneering organisations in the South African context provides empirical evidence of the merit of such approaches, with recommendations on how tools and approaches can even better serve the needs of youth. Further, longitudinal research is merited into the use of such capability measurement approaches to empower youth and the further use of participatory methodologies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate in what ways volunteers at local youth empowerment organizations can contribute to the prevention of adversity and intimate partner violence among youths, as well as their perception of the needs of their target group. Another aim is to discuss the possibilities of cooperation between different agents working to support adolescents, which includes volunteers, schools, parents and other adults. This subject is relevant for social work as organizations in the nonprofit sector can be established as producers of welfare services. The investigation is conducted through qualitative thematic analyses of interviews with four volunteers from two different organizations, and the analysis is presented in three themes. The theoretical perspectives applied are street-level bureaucracy, ecological system theory, stigma, and gender theory. The empirical body describes both opportunities and limitations of the preventative work, and the result implies that no single agent has enough resources to decrease adolescents’ social vulnerability by their own means. Therefore, the possibility of cooperation between agents in various levels of the ecological system is discussed. The conclusion of this study is that all agencies need to contribute to create more effective prevention and support measures to reduce youth adversity and intimate partner violence, and volunteers can play a key role in this work.