Positive Youth Development

Positive youth development (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. PYD is used in scientific literature and by practitioners who work with youth to refer to programs designed to optimize developmental progress.

PYD differs from other approaches to youth in that it rejects an emphasis on trying to correct what is "wrong" with children's behavior or development. Programs and practitioners seek to empathize with, educate, and engage children in productive activities. While not particularly common in use yet, PYD has been used across the world to address social divisions, such as gender and ethnic differences.

Positive youth development originated from ecological systems theory to focus on the strengths of adolescence. It is also similar conceptually with the principles of positive psychology. Central to its philosophy, the theory of PYD suggests that "if young people have mutually beneficial relations with the people and institutions of their social world, they will be on the way to a hopeful future marked by positive contributions to self, family, community, and civil society."

The major catalyst for the development of positive youth development came as a response to the negative and punitive methods of the "traditional youth development" approach. The traditional approach makes a connection between the changes occurring during adolescent years and either the beginning or peaking of several important public health and social problems, including homicide, suicide, substance use and abuse, sexually transmitted infections and teen and unplanned pregnancies. Another aspect of the traditional approach lies in that many professionals and mass media contribute to it through the portrayal of adolescents as "inevitable problems" that simply need to be fixed. Specific evidence of this "problem-centered" model is present across professional fields that deal with young people. Many connections can also be made to the current U.S. criminal justice model that favors punishment as opposed to prevention.

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