Nikhil Daniel
Pronouns: he/him/his
Research Mentor(s): Denise Jones
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Combined Program in Education and Psychology (CPEP) / Education
Program:
Authors: Nikhil Daniel, Denise Jones
Session: Session 4: 1:40 pm – 2:30 pm
Poster: 39
Abstract
This research highlights how Youth Civic Leadership Academy (YCLA) builds the future for its participants. The objective is to inspire youth to imagine possibilities and futures for themselves despite their circumstances and the structural inequities they experience. YCLA helps young people by giving them skills to thrive as civic leaders, community stewards, and change makers in the workplace. It also helps them to explore career fields that are typically off limits to underserved communities. The purpose is to expose youth to various city government departments and build necessary competencies needed to succeed in their future careers. YCLA helps its participants to understand how government entities are connected and how they impact their daily lives. The goal is to increase academic performance and professional skills to succeed beyond post secondary education. YCLA is facilitated through Youth Enrichment Services (YES), a non-profit organization in Pittsburgh, PA. YES provides socially and economically at risk youth the opportunity to achieve success through participation in mentorship, education, and enrichment programs. Leveraging possible selves and future orientation theoretical frameworks, this project focuses on how community-based educational spaces like YES help Black youth develop an orientation toward the future and prepare for their post-secondary trajectories. The research is using a survey based methodology with a correlational study. The data is collected from the participants’ survey results and analyzed using Excel to find patterns and common themes. We hypothesize that the YCLA program participants will feel more empowered to share their vision for civic engagement and other social-political issues as they work towards building a safe and thriving community. Hence, the social benefit of this research is to find out whether the youth from disadvantaged backgrounds will benefit if provided with the resources to succeed to enable YCLA and YES to expand this program to more participants.
