by Susan P. Curnan

CYD is intentional social change. It is a process of youth and adults working in partnership to create just, safe, and healthy communities.
- CYD Framework©, Vol. 1, No. 1, CYD Journal

Many people throughout the U.S., and, indeed, around the world, resonate with the concept of Community Youth Development, and applaud the goal of creating just, safe, and healthy communities. At the same time, however, many have serious questions about strategy, operations, delivery systems, and the whole process of planning, implementing, and evaluating CYD in practice. As the CYD movement comes of age, its managers and leaders face enormous challenges and pressure to align vision and effective strategies with measurable short- and long-term outcomes.

We are all managing in a time of complex change that requires continuous improvement in both quality and accountability. A burgeoning youth participation movement, the increasingly complex set of risks an opportunities today's young people face, and the increased focus on measuring outcomes by government and foundation funders has accelerated the need for organizational development processes.

The CYD Framework©, put forth in the winter 2000 issue of CYD Journal, provides an effective "working template" for communities around the world to think through some of these challenges. The focus of this framework can be adjusted to many types of organizations-national, regional, local, not-for-profit, profit, governmental-as well as to multiple forms of organizational activities including planning, program evaluation, and staff development.

In the hands of seasoned CYD managers and leaders, the framework serves both as an education tool and as a means to engage others in the co-creation of those strategies and activities necessary to advance Community Youth Development. Once identified, these general sensibilities about strategy and outcome can be translated into action. But how will this be accomplished? What are the most effective operating strategies and what are reasonable outcomes?

The "CYD Management Zone," a new department in the CYD Journal, is designed to address these questions and challenges, and to provide a forum for the rich exchange of research and experience-based ideas between readers and management coaches. It has been said that the essence of good management is "to make knowledge productive."

This is the goal for our new department. By creating a "management learning zone," a no-holds-barred, spirited conversation between Heller School management faculty and CYD activists, readers will explore and experience what it takes to "make CYD happen" in policy and practice. In each issue, managers and leaders in the Community Youth Development movement will have an opportunity test their approach to aligning strategies and outcomes with "CYD coaches" at the Heller School (see the sidebar that follows). In the spirit of our larger mission to "promote just, safe, and healthy communities," these coaches will bring a broad range of knowledge to your management-related problems. Whether your interest is in youth development, community building, partnerships and collaborations, civic practice, innovative program evaluation and outcome measurement, strategic planning, financial management, organization culture, learning organization theory, or changing families and changing times, we will bring a dedicated faculty and renowned research community to the forum to help advance the field of CYD.

By creating a "management learning zone," a no-holds-barred, spirited conversation between Heller School management faculty and CYD activists, readers will explore and experience what it takes to "make CYD happen" in policy and practice.

• Evaluation philosophy and expectations

• Preparing for evaluations

• Designing and conducting evaluations

• Communicating findings and utilizing results

As a context for this exchange, we ask that you think about the following questions:

• How can we use evaluation information and innovations in evaluation methodology to improve CYD programs and shape policy?

• What do managers and leaders in the CYD movement need to know and be able to do regarding evaluation?

We want to hear from you! Please enter the Management Zone and be part of this exciting dialogue. Email your questions to curnan@brandeis.edu no later than June 15, 2000. Also, check out the Heller School web site.

Sidebar

The Heller School Management Coaches: Transcending the Boundaries Between Academia and the CYD Movement At the Heller Graduate School, Brandeis University, our primary responsibility is the generation, application, and dissemination of knowledge. In broad terms, we are a university-based center for advanced study in social policy and management of health and human services. In providing education and training to prepare our students for successful careers, our work is guided by adherence to the highest standards of intellectual rigor and academic integrity. We are also committed to our role as strategic allies with community agents in the CYD movement. We respect different voices and different ways of knowing. As we see it, our role is to demystify, democratize, and disseminate expertise through a productive academy-community relationship. As partners in capacity building for management and leadership development, our challenge is to continue to enrich research-based CYD practice with findings on risk and resilience, youth-adult partnership, motivation, learning styles, and developmentally appropriate designs, as well as state-of-the-art management strategies. Our challenge [at the Heller Graduate School] is to continue to enrich research-based CYD practice with findings on risk and resilience, youth-adult partnership, motivation, learning styles, and developmentally appropriate designs, as well as state-of-the-art management strategies. In short, our goal, like that of the CYD movement, is the promotion of social justice. We want to have a positive impact on the human condition through the knowledge that we create, the education that our students receive, the accomplishments of our alumni, and the extent to which our work transcends the boundaries between academia and the broader society.

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