Marc Mannes

Positive Adaptation, Resilience, and the Developmental Asset Framework

Advances in our understanding of adaptation are rooted in the seminal work of Garmezy, Rutter, Werner, and others who “discovered” a not inconsiderable proportion of children who, thought to be at risk for current and future maladaptation, showed few or no signs of pathology and often exhibited high levels of competence (Garmezy, 1974; Rutter, 1979; Werner & Smith, 1982). Investigating what made a difference in this group of children’s lives led at first to descriptions of correlates of positive development among children living in high-risk contexts and has progressed to complex process models allowing for multiple causal effects across multiple ecologies (Masten, 1999a). Two of the great contributions from this line of work have focused on elucidating the mechanisms thought to underlie both adaptive and maladaptive developmental trajectories under conditions of adversity, as well as advancing the position that studies of positive adaptation and competence should be studied alongside the more dominant models of risk, pathology, and treatment (Garmezy, 1974; Rutter, 1979; Masten, 2001). These advancements in turn have been instrumental in current intervention and prevention practices (Rolf & Johnson, 1999).

School-business partnerships, developmental assets, and positive outcomes among urban high school students a mixed-methods study

This article reports the connections among urban students’ school-business partnership experiences, developmental assets or strengths they report in their lives, and positive developmental outcomes. Surveys were completed by 429 9th-to 12th-grade Hispanic and African American students, mostly low income in an inner-city high school, and 76 students, parents, school staff, and business partners participated in observations, interviews, and focus groups. Urban youth with higher level developmental assets reported fewer risk behaviors and more thriving. Students with higher level exposure to school-business partnerships reported higher levels of developmental assets and positive developmental outcomes, including better grades, better school attendance, and more academic motivation. The most impactful partnership experiences emphasized the building of relationships between students and caring adults. These relationships engaged, affirmed, and activated students’ inner resources for school success. The results suggest that promoting students’ broad physical, cognitive, emotional, and social well-being can pay academic and other developmental dividends.

The Role of Parental Status and Child Age in the Engagement of Children and Youth with Adults Outside their Families

The authors report on a telephone poll with a nationally representative sample of 1,425 U.S. adults in which they investigated how parental status and age of child might affect patterns of adult engagement with children and youth outside their own families. Compared to nonparents, parents considered 12 of 20 ways of being involved with young people to be significantly more important for all adults to do. This result suggests that fears of negative parent reaction about other adults’ involvement may be exaggerated. Parents and nonparents alike rated it more important for unrelated adults to engage with children than with adolescents, and adults, in general, actually engaged more with those younger children than with adolescents. Community efforts that raise explicit awareness of how supportive parents are of such relationships may help create new social norms in which positive engagement with other people’s children and especially adolescents is expected and supported.

The Role of Neighborhood and Community in Building Developmental Assets for Children and Youth: A National Study of Social Norms Among American Adults

Unrelated adults play potentially important roles in the positive socialization of children and youth, but studies of adolescents suggest the majority of adults do not engage positively with young people on an intentional, frequent, and deep basis. As a result, only a minority of young people report experiencing key developmental assets that have been associated with reduced risk-taking behaviors and increased thriving. Social norms theory suggests that adults will be more likely to get deeply involved with young people outside their family if that involvement is viewed as highly important, and if they perceive a social expectation to do so. A nationally representative sample of 1,425 U.S. adults was surveyed to determine the degree of importance American adults ascribed to 19 positive asset-building actions, and the degree to which the adults they knew actually engaged with young people outside their own families in those positive ways. The results showed that only a minority of Americans experience consistent normative motivation for engaging with other people’s children. There is a large gap between what adults consider important and what they actually do to construct positive, intentional relationships with children and youth. Community stability and extent of community-building activities in which adults engage, including participation in religious services, volunteering, and neighborhood meetings, are associated with differences among adults in the degree of normative motivation for engaging with young people. In addition to these group differences, however, there also are nine asset-building actions –two functioning as genuine social norms and seven as social values– that great majorities of American adults consider highly important. The foundation therefore exists in public opinion to make explicit greater permission for adults to become more deeply engaged in the lives of children outside their families and to thereby define new normative expectations for all adults to share in being responsible for the well-being of young people.

Community Sustainability: Orlando’s Healthy Community Initiative

In an area of exceptionally high mobility, Orlando’s Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth (HC • HY) initiative focuses on building a sense of community coherence and ownership by emphasizing community revitalization activities. Examples of this approach include “listening projects,” which consist of interviews conducted by youth and young adults with neighborhood residents to learn what they envision for their neighborhoods, and what is needed to make that happen. Youth then bring knowledge from these interviews to youth philanthropy planning meetings. By learning to assess the needs of the community and linking them with planning grants, youth are mentored into civic leadership roles. Through extensive efforts to connect residents of all ages in their community revitalization efforts, the Healthy Community • Healthy Youth Initiative of Central Florida (hereafter referred to as HCI or the Orlando initiative, consistent with the initiative’s self-referencing) hopes to encourage more of its citizens to “put down roots” rather than just passing through.

Pursuing “The Tipping Point”: Portland, Oregon’s Take the Time Initiative

Whereas the first two case studies we presented (Traverse Bay, Michigan’s GivEm40 and Moorhead, Minnesota’s Healthy Community Initiative) focus on particular sectors and neighborhoods, Portland’s Take the Time is organized largely around two interrelated theories of community change: diffusion of innovation theory, as articulated by Everett Rogers, and social threshold theory as discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s popular 2000 book The Tipping Point. Diffusion of innovation theory, which argues, in part, that influential early adopters of new ideas are critical to persuading others to try them out, is used to foster a grassroots orientation to mobilizing the community. Specifically, Take the Time initially used the widespread awarding of mini-grants to get the Developmental Assets framework in the hands of a number of potentially key early adopters who might persuade others to follow their lead. This strategy was designed to stimulate local ownership of the initiative and to reflect the value placed on individual contribution, creativity, and egalitarianism.

The Forgotten Neighborhoods: Moorhead, Minnesota’s Healthy Community Initiative

We follow the Traverse Bay initiative’s emphasis on one particular sector with the focus in Moorhead, Minnesota, on the needs and invisibility of specific neighborhoods. In particular, concerns about underage drinking and lack of out-of-school activities among youth in some of the poorest White and Latino neighborhoods served as a focal point for much of this initiative’s work. By collaborating closely with parks and recreation and community law enforcement, the initiative promoted such activities as a “Weed and Seed” program in an economically depressed neighborhood. The intent of this program was to stimulate neighborhood pride and a sense of civic responsibility among the youth. In addition to working with the parks and recreation and law enforcement sectors, Moorhead has pursued its neighborhood-based orientation by actively engaging elder leaders, supporting Latino youth as community leaders, and bringing the generations together to collectively build a stronger community.

Strategic Care, Sector by Sector: Traverse Bay Area’s GivEm40 24.7

We begin our presentation of the eight Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth (HC • HY) initiatives with Traverse Bay Area’s GivEm40 24.7 (GivEm40) to illustrate an initiative that intentionally chose to go sector deep versus spreading its efforts equally across a multitude of community sectors. The hallmark of GivEm40 is the exceptional buy-in of the educational system, with all 19 of the area school system superintendents making strong commitments to the initiative. By beginning our presentation of the HC • HY approaches with a model that emphasizes sector-specific depth as its starting point, we are positioned to build toward applications that prioritize more complex cross-sector collaborations.

Transformation, Affirmation, and Blended Models

The central purpose of our study was to explore the range of approaches used by the eight Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth (HC • HY) initiatives in their efforts to implement the Developmental Assets framework. We discovered a fascinating array of strategies used across the initiatives, including approaches that were common to the eight community sites and others that were unique to one initiative or another. The overarching story emerging from our analysis is one of transformation, affirmation, and blended (or braided) models. Transformation refers to the dramatic changes in community life and functioning that are required to effectively promote healthy youth development. We heard hopeful stories of perceived transformation in action and concerned stories about how far a community needs to move in order to achieve the transformation necessary to accomplish an initiative’s aims. We also heard repeated examples of affirmation, in which HC • HY participants described the asset framework as affirming their already held beliefs and behaviors regarding what was important and essential for healthy youth development. But affirming one’s actions and point of view is one thing; turning that affirmation into a cohesive community-wide effort is quite another. The stories of affirmation included here center on efforts to translate convictions into sustainable processes shared by progressively larger proportions of the community. Finally, blended models represent efforts to connect the Developmental Assets with existing prevention and intervention approaches by blending or braiding particular aspects of different frameworks. A key question that stems from this finding is this: How can we use a Developmental Assets approach in different ways in response to different levels of youth need? In other words, how do we adapt and customize a Developmental Assets approach and integrate it with prevention and intervention efforts when youth clearly need all three responses?

“Leaderful” Communities: The McPherson, Kansas, Tri-County Asset-Building Initiative

The asset-building efforts of McPherson, Kansas, and its partnership with the three counties of McPherson, Reno, and Harvey has been shaped by a statewide emphasis on supporting the development of local community leadership. (Consistent with local references to the McPherson Tri-County Asset-Building Initiative, we use the terms “McPherson,” “McPherson initiative,” and “McPherson tri-county initiative” interchangeably to represent the larger partnership.) Some Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth (HC • HY) initiatives, such as Portland’s Take the Time, emphasize a grassroots approach to mobilization on behalf of Developmental Assets. Others, such as Traverse Bay, Michigan’s GivEm40, prioritize the engagement of established community leaders. Asset building in McPherson presents an interesting juxtaposition to these orientations through its emphasis on leadership training for both new and experienced leaders. McPherson’s asset-building initiative emerged from a belief that a community’s residents require specific skills in assuming effective leadership roles, and cannot simply rely upon life and career experience to successfully mobilize and produce social change.