Youth Infusion - What We Do

Who We Serve | How We Can Help Your Organization | How Much Our Services Cost | Our Track Record | Schedule A Consultation Today

Youth-adult partnerships are hard work. Organizational structures, systems, and processes are often built around the needs of adults, not youth. Youth Infusion helps government agencies and youth-serving organizations shift from simply providing youth services to actively engaging youth in programmatic and policy-making processes. By analyzing the structure of organizations, establishing youth-adult workgroups and advisory boards, training youth and adults in cooperative decision-making, and updating institutional cultures, Youth Infusion enhances an organization’s capacity to meet its youth-related mission and goals. Download our brochure for more information.

- Our Clients

• Governmental Agencies: Youth Infusion works with local, state, and federal governmental agencies to integrate youth into advisory board structures and workgroups. Youth Infusion provides trainings and facilitates meetings to help ensure that youths’ ideas are heard and incorporated into decision-making processes. We have experience working within each level of government and understand the unique environment in which youth are placed.

• Non-Profits: Youth Infusion provides consultation services to any non-profit organization with an adolescent health or youth development focus. We analyze an organization’s mission and vision and help to realize that mission/vision by bringing the youth “target audience” to the table as active decision-making partners.

• Professional Organizations: Professional organizations supporting individuals who work with young people can benefit from hearing from and working with the youth that they serve. Youth Infusion helps professional organizations plan and facilitate conferences with youth and include youth in programmatic and policy decision-making processes.

• Schools: Youth Infusion works with schools and school districts to give students an active voice in hiring decisions, curriculum development, school design, and policy-making processes.

• Youth: Not only is Youth Infusion organization youth-run, but we always work with diverse groups of youth to develop our materials and write our curricula. All youth who we recruit to sit on youth advisory boards and workgroups receive specialized training.

We serve organizations that value youth voice, but do not yet know how to meaningfully engage youth. We provide step-by-step 'how-to' guidance tailored to meet the particular needs, opportunities, and constraints of each organization with whom we work.

Our consulting service consists of five primary components: (1) The Preliminary Evaluation, (2) The Strategic Plan, (3) Trainings, (4) Meeting Facilitation, and (5) Evaluation.

Youth Infusion Consulting Services

Preliminary Evaluation: Youth Infusion interviews the organization’s directors, staff members, and current board members to map out the services and programs which currently involve or target youth. This is typically a month-long process which results in an appreciative inquiry of the organization’s strengths and identifies areas where youth and adults could better work together to further the organization’s mission and goals.

Strategic Plan: Youth Infusion specifically outlines how youth could be infused into the organization’s decision-making structure and program development/evaluation processes. We compile a series of recommendations and action-steps for the organization to take, and work to build a case within the organization for long-term, incremental change.

Trainings: Youth Infusion provides trainings to adults and youth on such topics as (1) Organizational structure and hierarchy, (2) Perceptions of youth and adults, (3) Youth roles, (4) Youth advisory board/project design, (5) Youth recruitment, (6) Youth-adult goal setting and planning, (7) Youth advocacy and media awareness (8) Logistics of working with youth, and (9) Youth-adult conflict resolution. Our trainings are customized to fit the needs of each particular organization.

Facilitation: We understand both the challenges and rewards of bringing youth to the decision-making table. To help teach youth and adults how to partner with each other, we facilitate meetings and workgroups and help to plan conferences. We also produce a “youth-adult partnerships trouble-shooting guide” for organizations.

Evaluation: We are committed to assessing how well we help your organization involve and integrate youth. We continually monitor our own progress and adjust our trainings and tools as needed.

We understand that youth-serving organizations want to spend their resources on front-line service to young people, not on infrastructure development and administration. That is why Youth Infusion offers a flexible, sliding scale for our services. Nearly half of our work is pro-bono, as long as our travel costs are met. And the other half of our services are provided well below market rates. Check out our Price List!

Hear what organizations we have worked with say about our services:

"Because of the world that we live in today, youth have to be excited and made to feel a part of the solution. As an employee of the largest volunteer health organization in the country, I personally would utilize [[Youth Infusion’s] research to help me recruit, train and retain youth as active members of our organization."
Amy Hoge, American Cancer Society, Austin Metro Region

1. American Cancer Society
Youth Infusion helped to develop a youth-initiated tobacco prevention program and organized a 300-attendee conference addressing community-wide approaches to ending youth tobacco use.
2. Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning (YELL)
Youth Infusion provided advocacy training to middle school students involved in the YELL program. Through our trainings, participants learned to identify community challenges and to generate strategies for addressing these problems at the local level.

3. Upward Bound
Youth Infusion led five youth advocacy workshops and inspired students to utilize their school board and city government structures to voice ideas and concerns.
4. Rhode Island Department of Health Youth Infusion was hired by the Rhode Island Department of Health to develop a sustainable youth engagement model. We proposed an action research model, and helped the Rhode Island Department of Health hire nine youth to serve as action researchers and youth advocates. Youth learn how to conduct research in their schools and communities and then partner with adults to use that research as a concrete, evidence-based tool for change.

"Youth [in our program], though initially excited about improving their communities, felt frustrated when their goals they developed became too far-reaching and they weren’t able to see an immediate impact. Drawing on personal experiences as well professional knowledge of community youth development, [Youth Infusion] was able to move the group of 20 middle schoolers from identifying a myriad of community problems to focusing their concerns on one of those issues and then developing strategies to address it at multiple levels."
Maria Fernandez, YELL at the John Gardner Center

If your organization is interested in scheduling a consultation, please fill out our Email Contact Form! We want to hear from you.