About Us

YDN’s programs and services offer resources and support to a full range of individuals, teams, and collaborations. Since its inception in 2000 (incorporating as an independent 501c3 in 2007) YDN has provided an array of customized developmental solutions to educational and business organizations that are dedicated to building environments and cultures where people are valued for who they are and encouraged to become their very best.

YDN is recognized throughout California as one of the leading facilitators, coaches, and trainers of the “strength-based” approach. YDN specializes in the areas of leadership development, team optimizations, and organization climate and culture. Its unique style of leading change connects people to their passion and purpose.

Places where people work, learn, and develop do not suffer from an achievement gap in as much as they suffer from an engagement gap.

Beyond the research, curriculum, and data that we share regarding strengths based human development you will find a gentle warm glow that invites you in. It invites you to take a seat, share a thought or two, give and receive the gift of listening, laugh, cry, ask why, and build the new. The container we set for dialogue is intentional. It is the difference between attending a training and belonging to a movement. It is where intelligence and empathy meet to create a wonderful place to gather. It is our commitment to you to create the “wego” – a collective movement forward for the benefit of all. It’s that feeling that we are stronger together than apart- that we

“What we know about individuals, no matter how rich the details, will never give us the ability to predict how they will behave as a system. Once individuals link together they become something different…Relationships change us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become more visible, even to ourselves.”    Margaret Wheatly and Myron Kellner Rogers

YDN believes that in order for schools, businesses and organizations to function at an optimal level the people who work within those systems must be equipped with the proper tools and possess an understanding of best practices. The YDN approach will help you start creating positive change within your organization or team.

The five key supports and opportunities that promote desirable outcomes and success include:
1. Access to emotionally, culturally, and physically safe environments
2. Caring and consistent healthy relationships
3. Opportunities to participate (decision making power)
4. Opportunities to contribute and know the community
5. Opportunities to build skills in engaging and challenging ways

One of the primary goals is to create a shift in thinking that encourages organizations, schools, and businesses to focus on providing the basic supports and opportunities needed to promote optimal development of students and employees.

We encourage individuals to focus on what’s right in order to help fix what’s wrong.

Concept:
A process by which all young people seek ways to meet their basic physical and social needs and to build competencies (knowledge and skills) necessary to succeed in adolescence and adulthood.

Practice:
An approach to working with young people that intentionally helps youth meet developmental needs, builds their capacity, and provides relationships and connections needed for their success. The youth development approach is based on over 50 years of research in the youth development asset development and resiliency fields.

Youth Development Principles:

• Problem free is not fully prepared
• Single focus strategies don’t work
• Development happens across all settings
• All young people need the same supports and opportunities
• Youth should not be viewed as service recipients
• Youth engagement and high levels of participation are important

Why Youth Development?

• In Sacramento County, fewer than 45% of students meet or exceed standards on statewide CAASPP tests– for some groups of students as few as 18% reach those standards.
• 14% of all students are marked as chronically absent (10% of instructional days) while 6% of all students were suspended for at least one full day.
• Only 47% of all students completed their A-G requirements.
• While 59% of Sacramento area 11th graders (who took the California Healthy Kids Survey in 2018-2019) reported high levels of caring adult relationships in school settings, only 35% indicated that there were positive relationships between peers.
• 69% of 11th graders reported they did not have opportunities to participate in efforts to create positive change.

Research shows that youth who have support and opportunities that include: caring relationships, safe places, opportunities to participate and give back to their community, and have challenging and engaging skill building opportunities are more likely to thrive. Not all young people have equal access to these supports for healthy development. This is especially true in marginalized and high poverty areas.

While we recognize that all youth take risk in adolescence, it is the responsibility of all adults who interact with young people to bring out their promise.

The strengths movement is sweeping the country, and the strength-based approach is proving to be a dynamic way of increasing youth and staff engagement. Research data shows that most people do not come close to making full use of their assets at work—in fact, only 17 percent of the workforce believes they use their strengths on the job. Building a strengths-based culture is about getting every person in the organization to do what they do best every day, and in doing so—lower turnover, improved productivity, and increased client loyalty.

People who focus on using their strengths…

• Are three time as likely to report having an excellent quality of life
• Are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs

People that are in the strengths zone…

• Look forward to going to work
• Have more positive than negative interactions with coworkers
• Treat customers better
• Tell their friends they work for a great company
• Achieve more on a daily basis
• Have more positive, creative and innovative moments

These statistics also play into environments where youth are introduced to the strengths zone:

• Look forward to going to class / program
• Have more positive than negative interactions with teachers, students and youth serving professionals
• Treat others better
• Tell their friends they attend a great school / program
• Achieve more on a daily basis
• Have more positive, creative and innovative moments

YDN’s extensive experience with the strengths approach, in conjunction with their expert knowledge around human development and engagement, helps make the Strengths-Based training and coaching offerings powerful and impactful opportunities for the youth serving professionals, business leaders, schools and organizations that participate.

Concept:

Human Development is a process of human growth through which people move from being taken care of to taking care of others and themselves. An approach in which people are supported as they build their capacities and strengths to meet their personal social needs and those of the organization.

Practice:
An approach to working with people that intentionally helps them meet developmental needs, builds their capacity, and provides relationships and connections needed for their success. The human development approach is based on over 50 years of research in the human development asset development and resiliency fields.

Human Development Principles:

• Being fully prepared is an ongoing process
• Single focus strategies don’t work
• Development happens across all settings
• All people need the same supports and opportunities
• People should not be viewed as service objects or recipients
• Engagement and high levels of participation are important

Successful Model:

The City of Sacramento, Youth, Parks, and Community Enrichment Department set about creating organizational culture change over a three-year period. YDN supported the management team and staff by creating a sustainable model. The department continues to use both the Human Development Institute and the Youth Development Institute models to sustain optimal environments within their teams and programs for both staff and youth. To date, over 3,500 staff have been trained in the development model. Sacramento now has a city-wide master plan that embodies the development framework as evident in the city’s asset-based policies, procedures, and programs.

We must first come to terms that inequality does exist and that the data suggests real disparities in the opportunities that some groups of people receive versus others. The terms equality and equity are often used interchangeably; however, the difference between equality and equity is that equality is evenly distributed tools and assistance while equity is custom tools that identify and address inequality. Justice is fixing the system to offer equal access to both tools and opportunities. Social justice is and has been one of YDN’s four core values since the organization was established and it is infused into everything we do and everything we are.

Inequailty, Equailty, Equity, Justice_Tree Example

Cultural Relevancy is effectively reaching and engaging communities in a manner that is consistent with the cultural context and values of that community; while effectively addressing the disparities of diversity and inclusion within an organization’s entire structure. The key to this is Cultural Responsiveness.

Cultural Responsiveness is a life-long learning process that requires knowledge and capacity at individual, organizational, and systemic levels. It focuses on establishing a long-term change set of consistent behaviors, attitudes, services and policies that are respectful of, and relevant to, the beliefs, practices, culture and linguistic needs of diverse families and communities. Culturally responsive organizations have a continuous improvement process that examines policies, practices, procedures, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce or fail to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities.

YDN believes that in order for schools, businesses and organizations to function at an optimal level the people who work within those organizations must be equipped with the proper tools and possess an understanding of best practices. The YDN approach will help you start creating positive change in your organization or team.

Icebreakers and energizers get participants moving, engaging with one another, and out of their comfort zones. When these three things occur, learning happens at the most optimal level. Everything YDN does is about modeling an approach to take with young people. One of our favorite sayings: “When the bum is numb, the brain is the same” – this is the reason we tactfully put them into place. We know when participants (and youth) have an opportunity to be engaged through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities, it creates a mental as well as emotional attachment to learning.

YDN is in the paradigm shift business, meaning we use trainings as a launching pad for actionable and sustainable change. Just like a prescription, if the dosage isn’t right we can’t guarantee that it will have a lasting and positive effect. An extended training leaves time for teams to create action plans for implementation.

The modalities we use are interactive. We set up true learning communities, when groups get too large participants feel like they are attending a conference or lecture – that’s not the “YDN way.” We can’t create engaged learning communities without using engaging modalities.

Training leaves participants wanting to create change, coaching takes them to the finish line. Most teams LOVE training, but struggle to implement their action plans–coaching gets teams to the place where they can say “we achieved something out of that!”

In the field of youth development, some youth report pejorative connotations with the terms “kid” or “child” (as if adults are talking down to them). As 21st-century learners, youth have shifting attitudes toward authority figures and place higher value on adult relationships that resemble a coach or mentor. The term “youth” equalizes the playing field for many young people.

Often, our greatest talents are hidden behind negative labels. Someone with a weakness seeking mindset may misidentify or undervalue a talent of yours. Other times, our talents may be used in such a way that others perceive it as negative. In other words, our talents can be misapplied or overdone. We call these scenarios the “basements” of our strengths.