northwest echo

Youth Outreach Campaign

Many children and youth in our community don’t participate in structured activities either on their school campus or after they leave school grounds. Complaining that there is nothing to do, they tend to hang out with friends or return home, often to an empty house. This can lead to high risk behaviors such as substance abuse and gang participation.

The Northwest ECHO partners wanted to deter youth from making negative choices and to attract the ‘non-joiners’ to their programs and activities. For assistance, they turned to Pasadena’s world-renowned Art Center College of Design and its Designmatters program, an innovative studio program that explores design as a positive force for social change. Together, they embarked on a collaborative project to develop outreach materials that would promote positive messages and steer at-risk teens towards beneficial activities.

A high priority for the Northwest ECHO partners was to involve local youth in the development of the project. The communications outputs also needed to be low cost, easy to implement, accessible and relevant to youth, and sensitive to cultural differences. In addition, the content and materials had to be suitable for use over an extended time period.

Working in teams, the Designmatters students researched, designed and developed diverse communications strategies that could also work jointly as a multi-faceted youth outreach campaign. The strategies employ a range of traditional and nontraditional media relevant to teens, with an emphasis on peer-to-peer media that teens can appropriate and distribute among themselves.

Speaking to youth in their language, on their terms

Making use of a popular teen communications tool, a text messaging system informs teens about positive youth-oriented events in the community. By texting the word “bored” to a central number from a cellular phone, the caller is entered into a database and receives messages about upcoming activities. The number is promoted on the back of appealing giveaway buttons and cards and through humorous videos posted on YouTube.

Giveaway trading cards feature information about unconventional careers as a way to address the hopelessness teens feel when they lack employment options for the future. Occupations such as pyrotechnician and foley artist can inspire teens to think outside the box. Each card has a link to a related MySpace site with more details, including how to prepare for the career.

The Dilemmas board game presents players with choices that can impact their future. The game is based on the premise that staying out of trouble is the result of a series of small decisions—Do I go to the mall or to school? Do I shoplift this candy bar or pay for it? The game demonstrates that a minor wrong choice can have serious consequences.

Other outreach ideas include zines (inexpensively produced mini-magazines) that teens can create and distribute among themselves, and posters and websites that expose the corporate interests behind the glorification of urban violence in pop culture.

The Northwest ECHO partners are utilizing the campaign materials to reach out to their youth audiences. The nontraditional career cards were featured at a local teen job fair attended by more than 120 youth. The Bored buttons were distributed at teen dances, each attended by more than 400 teens. For a teen poetry night, teens created and handed out a zine to the attendees. In addition, Flintridge’s student outreach coordinator has conducted promotional events at local high schools to distribute the materials. Thanks to a Challenge Grant from the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater LA, these efforts will be expanded to reach more young people.

The youth-accessible outreach strategies have been a hit with adult audiences as well. They were featured at the 2009 Communities Empowering Youth (CEY) annual conference in Washington, D.C. for CEY grant recipients, of which Flintridge is one. A presentation by Flintridge’s student outreach coordinator led to several requests from nonprofit organizations for permission to duplicate the innovative outreach ideas.

Photos: Brian Biery