Positive youth development, or PYD, refers to intentional efforts of other youth, adults, communities, government agencies, and schools to provide opportunities for youth to enhance their interests, skills, and abilities into their adulthoods. Youth development overall is the physical, social, and emotional processes that occur during the adolescent period, from ages 10 until 24 years. Simply speaking, it is the process through which young people acquire the cognitive, social, and emotional skills and abilities required to navigate life (University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development). Although the word 'youth' can be used synonymously with 'child', 'adolescent', or 'young person', the phrase 'youth development' or 'positive youth development' is usually used in the scientific literature and by practitioners who work with youth to refer to programs designed to optimize these processes. It is distinguished from 'child development' or 'adolescent development' in its focus on the active promotion of optimal human development, rather than on the scientific study of age related change.
Read more about Positive Youth Development: Importance of Youth Development, Key Characteristics, Practices and Current Directions, Using Positive Youth Development, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words positive, youth and/or development:
“As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things with one another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him who mourns; for him who is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)