Youth Resource Mapping: Partnering with Service Providers and Youth to Understand the Supply and Demand for Youth Services in a Local Context

Past research has shown that out-of-school time (OST) programs can have substantial benefits for youth, but connecting youth to programs can be challenging for a variety of reasons. To address these challenges, community leaders working with youth in one Silicon Valley community approached the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (JGC) at Stanford University wanting to better understand the availability and use of youth OST opportunities. This community has a high number of youth facing multiple risk factors as well as a deep tradition of community service, resulting in a dense network of youth-serving organizations in a relatively small community. Partners wondered why many youth were disconnected from services when there were so many available. In response, the JGC collaborated with this group of partners to design and implement a local, community participatory case study. Combining detailed information about program availability, survey data collected by youth on their peers’ OST activities, and crime and transit location data, we used a combination of GIS and quantitative data analyses to examine the supply and demand of youth programming and barriers to accessing those programs. This paper describes the process, methods, and initial findings of this project. evidence from multiple communities suggests low participation in these activities, particularly as young people move toward adolescence (Fredricks et al., 2002; Hultsman, 1992; Shann, 2001). Saito (2009) examined OST participation in Minneapolis by surveying youth and found that the supply of opportunities decreased for older youth; at the same time, their interest in programs also decreased. In Saito’s (2006) study, as well as others, youth consistently cited lack of knowledge about available opportunities as a reason for not accessing OST programs. Although much of this research on OST participation is generalizable across communities, we wanted to better understand the contributing factors for this decline in participation in one specific local context. To understand why EPA youth in particular are not accessing community OST programs, we adopted a resource mapping approach. Community Engagement The idea for the resource mapping project was brought to the JGC by a community partner through an informal discussion in November 2008. In April 2009, the UPS Endowment Fund at Stanford issued a call for proposals for a grant that was well-suited to a resource mapping project. Researchers from the JGC then invited a group of community leaders who work with youth to meet and discuss if and how they would like to see a community resource project unfold. Purposely aiming for broad-ranging constituencies, we invited partners representing six community organizations, including three youth OST program providers, one family services provider that focuses on immigrant families, one community advocacy organization, and a convening umbrella agency for youth-focused organizations in EPA. This resource mapping project was a good fit for the JGC, whose mission is to partner with communities to conduct research and develop leadership to effect change in the lives of youth. The JGC’s model of research is to engage community organizations that work with youth in a participatory research process where the beneficiaries of the research guide the research agenda and use their on-the-ground expertise to complement our research skills. The JGC was founded specifically to break down the traditional divide between Stanford and its surrounding communities, following in the tradition of its namesake, John W. Gardner, who advocated for universities to engage with communities and for partners to work across organizational boundaries to find solutions to problems (Gardner, 2003). This collaborative approach that infuses our research helps to ensure that the research reflects the experiences of the intended end-users of the findings and is useful to them. Community-based participatory research builds the capacity and leadership of community members to use data in their decision-making processes (Titterton & Smart, 2008) and to organize and advocate for change (Minkler, Vasquez, Tajik, & Petersen, 2008). Based on the JGC’s past experiences implementing community participatory research projects (Anyon & Fernandez, 2007), we knew that it was important to build community involvement in the EPA/Belle Haven Youth Resource Mapping Project, which marked our first major involvement in the EPA/ Belle Haven community. Although university–community partnerships can be rewarding, they can also be marred by resistance, suspicion, or differences in goals between university and community-based personnel or structural issues related to unclear boundaries or management of cross-agency partnerships (Barnes et al., 2009). We were especially sensitive to this dynamic because the EPA/Belle Haven community has had challenging interactions with researchers in the past. In fact, some community members initially expressed hesitancy about becoming involved in the project until they were convinced that the researchers were committed to producing information that would be useful to the community. At the initial meeting of potential partners that we convened in April 2009, some individuals and organizations expressed concerns about collaborating with a center based at Stanford because of perceived university/community inequities and past challenges. However, the representative of a community organization (a representative with whom the JGC had previously partnered and who had initially brought the project idea to us) reassured his colleagues that the JGC had previously been an excellent community partner and that he genuinely believed our intention was to help the community. This individual’s advocacy on our behalf allowed the meeting—and the project—to move forward successfully. The community partners supported and refined the resource mapping project idea at that initial meeting in April 2009 and agreed to be part of an ongoing advisory body that would continue to give direction to the project. The youth resource mapping project proposal received funding in June 2009. Collaboratively, the group decided on three main research questions: 1. What programs are available to youth in the East Palo Alto and Belle Haven communities, and where are there gaps or duplication in available services? 2. How do available services overlap with the availability and interests of youth? 3. What factors inhibit or facilitate accessing the services available to local youth? The group also conferred regarding the project’s scope. We decided to limit the scope to middle and high schoolaged youth, both to make the project more manageable and also to focus on the age ranges where youth tend to disengage from school and other structured time activities. The group decided to include both the City of East Palo Alto and the Belle Haven neighborhood of the City of Menlo Park because together the two areas comprise the attendance area for the Ravenswood City School District, and many youth access services on both sides of the city border. Gathering Data on Youth Programs Having developed the research questions in collaboration with the PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN EDUCATION Spring 2011 | PAGE 4