Health and social policies identify empowerment as a guiding ideal for health promotion, yet
there is little theoretical understanding of youth empowerment. The need for theory to guide practice and
research in working with youth in a health promotion context led to this grounded theory study to develop
a theory of youth empowerment. A community health nurse acting on BC Ministry of Health's
adaptation of the World Health Organisation's Healthy Cities Initiative initiated a community organising
project in an inner city community of Vancouver, which merged with the Vancouver Board of Parks and
Recreation Blueprint for Youth Services policy. The study was based on 32 months of participant
observation where the researcher was a co-facilitator of a community organising effort aimed at engaging
youth in identifying their quality-of-life issues, and developing and implementing their solutions. Of the
,123 youth entering the process, 66 attended at least three meetings of which 18 demonstrated ongoing
commitment to the community action process.
Partnering between adults and youth as the process of empowering youth emerged as the core
category in the analysis, comprised of two sub-processes, Creating an Empowering Environment for
Youth and Becoming Empowered. An empowering environment allowed youth to take responsibility in a
welcoming social climate with enabling support from adults. The adults demonstrated their belief in the
capacity of youth to act in the community, expected youth to take responsibility, cared for youth, and
offered encouragement through acting-with interactions with young people. Youth felt welcome and
participated in the process, taking responsibility for voicing, decision making and action on their qualityof-
life issues. The adults transferred the power to youth by giving up their responsibility for voicing,
decision making and taking action. By taking responsibility and acting in the community with enabling
support, the youth became empowered by controlling the process and incrementally developing their
competence, self-esteem, confidence and understanding, which cultivated their belonging to the
community. Participating in an empowering process enhanced their development and set in motion a
social change process that raised the consciousness of adults and influenced organisational practice. The
theory identifies youth empowerment as an ecological construct and a capacity-building process.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9857 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Cargo, Margaret D. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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