Texas Youth Action Network
The Texas Youth Action Network (TYAN) promotes positive youth development and youth-adult partnerships.
Why Positive Youth Development?
Positive Youth Development (PYD):
- Guides communities how to organize youth services, opportunities, and supports;
- Assists young people to reach their full potential through youth engagement; and
- Emphasizes a shift in engaging youth by viewing youth as assets and not problems to fix.
PYD helps youth become contributing adults. Youth learn economic self-sufficiency, healthy family and social relationships, and community involvement. PYD focuses on building positive attitudes, skills, and behaviors. This reduces risky behaviors (Outley, 2018).
Why Youth-Adult Partnerships?
Trained caring adults support young people to impact communities in powerful, dynamic ways. Some of the ways are:
- Adults can understand problems better. They can think about solutions from the viewpoint of the young people affected.
- Young people benefit as well. Youth learn to be confident leaders. They develop the skills to tackle tough issues in their life and in the community.
Texas Youth Action Network
TYAN offers supports to help organizations build or expand Youth-Adult Partnerships (YAPs).
YAP goals are to empower youth and build programs and policies that are responsive to the needs of young people.
In 2023, TYAN continued to promote PYD and YAPs across Texas. TYAN had direct contact with more than 7,600 Texans interested in learning more about PYD and YAPs. TYAN supported youth-serving organizations to incorporate youth into organizational planning, decision-making, and policy development. TYAN's expanded network has a total of 80 community partners.
In efforts to concentrate on regional youth needs, TYAN proceeded to support pods. Pods are diverse community-based groups sharing resources and working together. Pods create community change, such as safer environments and new policies. Regional groups mobilize through capacity building, planning, implementation, and evaluation. In 2023, TYAN added 3 new pods. Currently TYAN supports 6 pods throughout Texas.
The table below outlines the benefits of TYAN for any organization and for community partners.
| Benefit | For All | For Community Partners |
|---|---|---|
| Learn about the benefits of PYD and YAPs | X | X |
| Organizational assessment of capacity for YAP | X | X |
| Resources and activities | X | X |
| Continuing education credits in youth development | X | X |
| See what YAPs across the nation are accomplishing | X | X |
| Grant support | X | |
| Technical assistance | X | |
| Expense-paid youth-adult workshops for planning and networking | X | |
| Program evaluation | X |
There are ways to become involved with TYAN. Find the one that works best for you.
- Subscribe to the newsletter for network updates with tips, strategies, and other interesting material on YAPs and PYD. To receive these ideas in your inbox, send a message.
- Use the tools and resources you find on the TYAN site.
- Browse through tools and resources to focus on topics most relevant to you.
Email tyan@ppri.tamu.edu and visit tyan.tamu.edu to find out more information.
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