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 by: Yas Ahmed (Staff Writer)
A fellow youth worker and good friend recently told me that he doesn’t know anyone in our age range (mid- to late twenties) who is planning something “big” for the future. I didn’t ruminate too much on it at the time, but his words stayed with me and I found myself still struck by the weight of them a few days later. They resonated. These are hard times. For many, they’ve been hard times for awhile now.
I’m a planner. A list-maker. A “if I had more time, I would...” dreamer. But even I find myself speaking much less in future tense these days. I want to, but something is holding me back. There feels to be a blanket of uncertainty, almost unwieldy in size, covering nearly all of us. It can be explained by a variety of social, political and economic contexts, I’m sure. The point is that it is palpable.
I was at a meeting recently for the YDPN, and we were brought back to the Four Points of Connection, which I’ll get more into in a moment. If you don’t know, the Four Points are the guiding lights of our work, if you will. They are why we do what we do. They tell us what needs to be in place in order for us as youth workers to be supported and sustained. Not just in abstract or feel-good terms – they are benchmarks for what practically we need and want to create in terms of systems, process, opportunities...kind of a vision in present tense, if that makes sense.
Intrapersonal Connections is my favorite because it’s what I’ve been waxing poetic about for years now, and it’s nice to see it as part of an official plan. It’s the only thing so far that both my therapist and my grandmother agreed on: what good are we to others if we’re no good to ourselves first? Taking stock of our own needs, skills, attitudes and beliefs seems pretty elementary, granted. But take a moment and ask yourself: when was the last time you really did something with the answer? Making the connection between our walk and our talk – our values and our practices – is difficult to prioritize when we are so busy walking and talking. YDPN exists to help remind us we are as much a priority as the work that we do.
Connected to that, of course, is Financial Connections -particularly important to me right now because I was laid off recently like many others I know, and so this one is probably a bit more palpable for me than it was the first time I heard it. How many youth workers I’ve spoken with who have been called upon to help youth with whom they work open a bank account but still have trouble making their own rent, or don’t have health insurance, or some other quantifiable, straight up quality-of-life issue...it’s staggering. We can do better. We need to.
People Connections is another favorite of mine because how many of us have to answer the question “what do you do?” more than once, from the same person? Doing what we do and being able to effectively communicate the nuances of it to other folks – whether it’s Aunt Esther or a prospective funder – requires a particular skill set. When we are able to “make the case” about youth work – about the strategies and the values behind it, as opposed to merely the mechanics of it, might be the day that we hear a third grader say, “maybe I want to be a lawyer...or a youth worker.” Or, it might just be the day that Aunt Esther stops calling us babysitters. Either way, it’ll be a good day. I’ve always believed that we learn what we do best when we can demonstrate it and talk about it to others.
All of the Points were identified by us – youth workers in the Bay Area – as benchmarks for how we do our work; how we can deepen our work; how we can honor and commit and connect to it and each other. The final Point, Professional Connections, is probably the one that is the easiest for us to wrap our brains around, as it is the one that asks us to come up with a wish list. It asks us to think outside our experience as well as solely through it: come up with a context – training, education, experience, etc. - that would make us successful and supported as youth workers, and then challenges us to make it happen.
It’s the future tense Point, to me. They all kind of are, in one way or another. YDPN at its essence is about us, the workers. And the Four Points of Connection is kind of our youth worker manifesto. We all have had a hand or three in shaping and driving it. Knowing that, I’ve decided that I’m going to start 2009 planning big. And I hope you join me.
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