Impact: Key Insights & Emergent Themes
“Today is a glorious day! Let’s celebrate we have a lot to say / Don’t worry about the drinks / Don’t worry about the cake / We’re celebrating the action we’re gonna take.“
– Penned by Jóvenes en Acción student participant, for the closing remarks of their client presentations
Authentic Engagement Leads to Action
Y-PLAN is active learning in leadership and community development. The curriculum, featured in all the global exchange programming, requires students to engage as equal participants in the work, instead of as passive vessels waiting to receive knowledge. Instructors meet students where they are in their educational journey and provide them with the methods and language they need to investigate the civic issues that they will be tackling. Then, city agencies or other civic partners – their clients – meet with students and share the question they want students to solve.
After that, students move “Into Action” where they start their own research and data collection, before “Going Public” and presenting to their clients and others what they found and the solutions they propose. In Y-PLAN China: Shanghai and Beijing, the students’ school administrations were often their clients, and several projects focused on how to make schools greener and more energy efficient. Student scholars delivered, proposing plans that included pop-up green space, strategies to decrease food waste, and an application to coordinate student carpooling.
