Disrupt is a workshop series created by youth and adults to help you reimagine your own work to be more inclusive, creative and impactful. This is more than learning how to bring people to the table, these workshops will equip you with strategies to build authentic relationships and ensure that folks most impacted have decision-making power and are centered in your work. Using design thinking, youth participatory action research, critical race theory, and evaluation techniques this series will equip attendees with the tools to disrupt the status quo and develop solutions to the problems that confront their communities.

The workshops will be two days each, featuring opportunities to be hands-on and test out strategies to address issues that you face in your community or workspace. You will also walk away with tools and strategies that you can use beyond the workshop to disrupt the status quo. Lunch is included in the cost of admission (vegan, gluten-free and other options available).

If you have questions about the series please contact Libby Rau at libby@youthprise.org.

People are often asked to be innovative and develop new solutions, but they are left with the question: how do they do this? Design thinking is one way you can address the how. In this workshop you will learn the basics of design thinking and strategize about how you can apply the principles to your program or organization. Facilitators will share Youthprise’s unique approach to design thinking which utilizes the process to engage stakeholders including young people and the community in developing solutions. Youthprise’s design thinking process includes an additional step to ensure that young people are centered in the process.

In this workshop facilitators will walk you through a design thinking session framed around a question that participants collectively create, co-creating and building new ideas together. You will walk away with a design thinking toolkit and design materials from the session that they can use after the training to continue to apply the process to your work.

This workshop is for community members and people working at corporations, organizations, foundations, and government agencies looking to learn more about how you can use design thinking to disrupt the status quo and develop solutions.

In this workshop facilitators will walk you through the basics of evaluation and highlight different models you can use to evaluate your organization or program alongside stakeholders most impacted by your work. Facilitators will describe the difference between a theory of change and a logic model and connect Youthprise’s evaluation approach to its impact strategies around youth engagement and community change.

Once participants understand the basics, you will have the opportunity create a logic model, success rubric, or reporting template of your own and receive feedback from other participants and facilitators. You will additionally have the opportunity to create an action plan for next steps in bringing this draft to those most impacted by your work for future co-creation and decision-making.

There will be opportunities for peer-to-peer learning throughout the workshop around other topics pertinent to evaluation. Participants can expect to walk away with an understanding of evaluation and impact basics, tools and templates to support your evaluation work, a concrete draft of your choice to begin to share your work and its impact, and an action plan for next steps to bring your evaluation to fruition to better share your impact.

This workshop is for anyone looking to apply data or evaluation theory in practice, co-create an evaluation project with community, or share your impact in a deeper way.

In this workshop facilitators will share how Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can be used to empower and engage communities of color in organizations and foundations. YPAR, given its participatory framework, can build community power around an organization’s mission and vision. Not only does this research framework shift power dynamics, build and strengthen youth leadership, but it also can leave your organization and community with a stronger relationship to create and build solutions together.

As a participant, you will walk away with a YPAR curriculum that they can use to facilitate a youth research team within your own organization.

This workshop is for educators, organizations, foundations, and community members looking to learn more about YPAR, youth-led methodologies, solution building, and action planning.

In this workshop you will collaborate with young people to re-imagine and shift your field of work. You will hear from young people and those that have collaborated and partnered with young people to strategize on how your organization can best partner/collaborate/co-create with youth. Learn from youth leaders and organizations that have cultivated authentic working relationships. If you believe like us, that having young people at the table is only the beginning then join us in April. We will learn together how having an anti-racist intersectional approach not only helps build authentic relationships with youth and the broader community, but it helps sustain those relationships. Together let’s fight against tokenism and paternalism to re-imagining what it means to be a professional recognizing and partnering with powerful young minds.

This workshop will include a round table with youth and professionals that are currently working with youth. They will share challenges they have faced while working with organizations and also successful partnerships. There will also be an opportunity at the end of the training where workshop participants can strategize a pathway to developing authentic working relationships with youth.

Participants will walk away from this workshop with a reading list to continue their learning. They will also have access to chapter 1 of our YPAR curriculum that provides activities designed to assist in building authentic and ethical relationships with youth and the broader community. 

The intended audience for this workshop is working professionals who advocate for young people and or have yet to work with young people but are looking to engage young people in future projects and partnerships.