What is Integrative Youth Development (IYD)™?
Integrative Youth Development™ organizes the best of the youth-development research into a consilience framework. We have identified the seven PHactors that assess, nurture, and sustain young people.
The science of Integrative Youth Development™ is founded in the multi-disciplinary study of young people within the context of their environments (personal ecologies).
In IYD, we have put together a comprehensive framework that works to support young people from all cultures and allows all of the programs a shared, common sense, and measurable objective to support children and youth.
IYD is interdisciplinary and builds upon research, data, and insights from biology, genetics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, theology, economics, physics, and anthropology.
IYD presents a framework to ensure thriving for individual youth by demonstrating the role of their unique traits, talents, and propensities within the conditions provided by family, school, community, and culture.
Over the past 50 years,
researchers and theorists have been exploring the time-honored cultural wisdom that shows how all youth are more likely to thrive within a nurturing and supportive environment that provides opportunities for talent identification and skill development.
Within this Web of Support, the young person names the values, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs they will absorb into their personality and give them more options in the environments outside this Web.
Why Do We Use The PH?
A few people are constantly disturbed by our use of PH in our IYD work, seminars, and writings. We use the PH because of two primary reasons:
FIRST,
First, we link directly to Aristotle's notion of philia, which he defined as a mutual feeling of friendship or affection essential to everyone in this world. In IYD, we proclaim our ability to measure "loves" in individual youth.
By using philia, individuals can use the word love universally, as intended, rather than the definition of love portrayed in contemporary film and music.
SECOND,
we use PH to help people understand that connection matters. And, because there is no other word for Family or Familia, we use the PH to showcase the three different types of "families" that we live and grow within.
1
Our first family is the one we were born into; this family is our biological or legal family. (Most of us agree that we didn't get to choose that one.)
2
Our second phamily (small ph) is the one that finds us. This is the phamily that is present in our community, in our physical place on earth. This phamily is found when we toddle out of our front doors into the influence of adults who find us. Here, we begin to be influenced by adults, other than our family members, from our neighborhood, school, and village.)
3
And our third PHamily (capital PH) is the one that we create and sustain. This PHamily is often composed of family, teachers, people from our faith community, tribe, youth program, friends of the family, etc. This PHamily is the one that builds the web of support for teens that serves as a safety net, a filter, and a launch.
AND FINALLY,
we use PH as having a PH balance. And in our case, it's a balance between balloon and yarn = nature and nurture. Having the right PH balance is essential for a resilient life, making the balloon and web of support a good PHit.
Measuring Progress
7 PHactors
Integrative Youth Development takes the best of the youth development research to focus our efforts on each young person. We have identified seven metrics that assess, nurture and sustain young people. These meaningful, memorable, and measurable metrics show progress in our work with children and youth. (See ROYGBIV below.)
RED
Red - Rule of Five - Every young person needs at least five adults (anchors) who care about, guide, and have high expectations of them within a Web of Support.
ORANGE
Orange - Tangible Strings - The easy-to-measure conditions, structures, and supports the young person catches from their Anchors.
YELLOW
Yellow - Intangible Strings - The more challenging to measure attitudes, values, traditions, and beliefs that the young person catches from their Anchors.
GREEN
Green - Growing the Balloon - The innate qualities, talents, and intelligences that ensure that the youth is "big enough" to be supported by the Web and "stick" to the people in the Web of Support.
BLUE
Blue - Scissor Cuts – The conditions inside or outside their control interfere and erode with the Tangible and Intangible Strings.
INDIGO
Indigo - Caring for the Carers - Supporting the people who anchor the Web to ensure they have a Web of Support of their own.
VIOLET
Violet - Social Norms - The community attitudes and behaviors that can either support or erode a Web of Support for children, youth, and their Anchoring adults.
Contact
Keep in touch
Contact:
Founder and CEO of ICAR-US
Derek Peterson
International Child/Youth Advocate
Prairie PHyre
Lidgerwood, ND 58053
derek@icar-us.com