Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development

The mission of the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development is to “unleash the potential of youth, adults, organizations, and communities to engage together in creating a just and equitable society.” Toward that end, the Innovation Center partners with organizations and individuals in the United States and around the world to “seek out expertise and innovation at the local level, test new and promising practices, advance the field of community and youth development, inform research and policy and effect social and economic justice on a broad scale” (Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, 2003).

The Innovation Center was founded as a project of the National 4-H Council in 1998, under the leadership of Wendy Wheeler, an internationally known and respected leader and innovator in youth and community development. Since then, the Innovation Center has grown into an independent nonprofit organization, still led by Wheeler. In order to sustain and develop relationships throughout the United States and the world, the Innovation Center, operating out of its base in Maryland, has developed a flexible, virtual structure that includes a network of staff and trainers—from grassroots organizations all over the world—who are changing the way youth development is done on a global scale.

This organizational structure has allowed the Innovation Center the flexibility to develop a geographically and culturally diverse staff and associate base that has been successful in establishing partnerships and initiatives with a broad range of individuals, organizations, and communities. The Innovation Center's contribution to the field of applied developmental science is evidenced in part through its commitment [Page 587]and ongoing effort to connect stakeholders in community and youth development throughout the world. One of the unique contributions of the Innovation Center in recent years has been the development and facilitation of peer-and interest-based gatherings, sometimes called “learning group meetings,” where community-based youth and community development practitioners can share, develop, and evaluate best practices, explore challenges, and develop shared resources. These gatherings have resulted in and strengthened powerful relationships among practitioners who may not otherwise have been able to connect—community organizers from Kenya and South Africa with youth activists from Los Angeles, California, and rural Alabama; youth workers from India with Native and African American youth development organizations; faith-based groups with gay youth activists. As a result of these relationships, communities as well as young people experience positive change.

The work of the Innovation Center always includes initiating, brokering, and supporting partnerships with and among local organizations, academics, policy-makers, and funders toward a common goal of both action and learning. Such connections develop into or out of Innovation Center–led initiatives such as the following recent examples:

• At the Table: A collaborative committed to building a national movement of youth in decision making, with partners as wide-ranging as the United Way, Points of Light Foundation, the Alliance for Justice, Youth on Board, and the University of Wisconsin Extension, among many others.
• Charting Community Connections (CCC): In partnership with community-based groups in the Hopi and Confederated Salish and Kootenai (Flathead) communities of Arizona and Montana, CCC has explored community mobilization efforts, especially through cultural revitalization. Evaluation and technical assistance on the project has been provided by the University of Arizona Extension and a native-owned and -led consulting firm in Montana.
• Service Learning for Community Change: Designed according to the key principles of building youth-adult partnerships, generating broad civic engagement, and contributing to ongoing community-building work. The Cooperative Extension offices in Oxford County, Maine, and Baltimore, Maryland, are project partners.
• The National 4-H Council, National Network for Youth and Youth Leadership Institute partnered with the Innovation Center to develop Youth-Adult Partnerships: A Training Manual (2003b).
• The Innovation Center collaborated with the Ford Foundation to create the Youth Leadership for Development Initiative (YLDI), thus developing ongoing partnerships with 16 community-based youth organizations in the United States and Africa who, through YLDI, explored and developed best practice for using civic activism as a strategy for youth development.

While core permanent staff members work closely with every Innovation Center project, the Innovation Center model also ensures that “boundaries are deliberately indistinct.” In fact, the Innovation Center has established a reputation for successful collaboration, for wanting “ideas and concepts from one project to spill over and become central to the execution of another…. Our chief aim is to share our experiences and knowledge with all youth workers and young leaders” (Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development, 2003).

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