Anna, Danielle, and Mike are planners for the City of Hampton, Virginia. Like most planners, their typical day might include meetings and emails, GIS mapping, facilitating focus groups, or preparing reports for commission packets. But unlike other city planners, this trio goes to high school.
The Hampton Youth Planners tackle issues as diverse as transportation and caring relationships. They have drafted policy, developed and funded programs, and created a community expectation that young people will “weigh in” on decisions facing the city’s governing bodies. Their work depends on a comprehensive system of youth engagement in the community, and a local government willing to support meaningful roles for young people in decision-making.
Hampton has supported a successful Youth Planner Program since 1996. The previous year, local government piloted a strategic neighborhood planning process in an historic section of the city. A group of teens from the city’s fledgling youth civic engagement initiative joined the process, eager to improve their neighborhood. Trained in communication and problem-solving, they were instrumental in helping to craft a plan that saved the city countless resources. Observing the value youth brought to the table, Director of Planning Terry O’Neill decided that they deserved a formal and ongoing role in all future planning efforts.
O’Neill hired the first two Youth Planners, and they began their work by contacting hundreds of teens in focus groups to gather input on how to improve Hampton for its youth. With a youth/adult steering group to help sift through the data, the Planners were able to accomplish two major tasks: they created a framework of issues that young people wanted to tackle and instituted a blueprint for youth involvement. Their recommendations, endorsed by Hampton City Council, helped to shape the city’s youth development infrastructure.
Anna, Danielle, and Mike, and the Youth Planners who went before them, are guided by Hampton’s official planning documents. Their work also helps to shape those documents and, thus, city policy. Starting with the 2010 Comprehensive Plan, each document has had an entire section (the first of its kind in the country) written entirely by youth and focused on young people’s strategic issues. In 2002, Hampton combined its Comprehensive and Strategic planning, and the resulting Community Plan still maintains a youth component among its critical areas of focus.
This means that a youth planner’s day is focused on policy that is youth-focused and youth-driven, guided by the youth-identified strategic issues in the Community Plan:
* Caring Relationships - Creating/ensuring positive youth and adult relationships;
* Youth Share Leadership - Increasing youth engagement and civic activities;
* Essential Life Skills - Ensuring access to opportunities that provide skills to succeed in life;
* Youth Prepared For Careers - Ensuring every young person has a career goal and opportunities to get there;
* Places To Go, Things To Do - Increasing the number of youth-friendly spaces and activities; and
* Getting Around - Diversifying and increasing transportation options for youth.
Even though they report to the city’s Planning Commission on a regular basis, Anna, Danielle, and Mike have their own commission to “play to.” Hampton Youth Commission (HYC), a 24-member board of young people, sets the overall direction for the city’s youth agenda on an annual basis. The Youth Planners staff the commission’s three committees, each responsible for two of the strategic issues.
Each year, Youth Commissioners determine the goals they will tackle to address their issues, and Youth Planners begin the research that will help commissioners make informed decisions or create appropriate strategies to address that issue. Thus, surveys, internet research, and interviews with city staff are part of the Planners’ daily fare. Projects have ranged from a bicycle policy to an evaluation of the city’s businesses to determine if they are youth-friendly. Currently they are working on a Candidates’ Forum in which the hopefuls for the upcoming elections for city council and mayor will have the opportunity to bring their platforms to the youth of the city.
This year is an exciting one for Anna. Her committee, responsible for transportation and youth-friendly space, is working on a new Teen Center. Based on over a decade of input from youth commissioners and planners, the city recently purchased a fitness facility with the intent of converting it to a teen center. Anna’s committee is assisting with renovation design and will create options for the burning question of how young people will get there.
In addition, Anna helps to facilitate the new Teen Center Youth Advisory Board, currently determining policy issues such as hours, membership fees, activities, programming, and the hiring of youth-friendly staff. Since previous planners and committees have developed safety and marketing plans, the center’s operation will truly be a youth and adult partnership.
Youth and adult partnerships are the centerpiece upon which the success of the Youth Planner Program is built. City staff and their partners from the local nonprofit youth development agency are careful to promote a philosophy throughout the community that sees young people as resources. Both youth and adults are trained in ways to successfully work with one another, and the commission is staffed by a uniquely collaborative effort.
Because of a deep commitment to youth voice, the Planning Department supports the youth planners each year with the personal, material, and financial resources that will ensure their success. They believe that the solution to “youth problems” is creating a supportive and caring community. And they are willing to invest in youth as part of the solution.
More information on the Hampton Youth Planner program can be obtained by contacting Donald Whipple, Senior City Planner at 757.728.5235 or dwhipple [at] hampton.gov. To find out more about Hampton’s entire Youth Civic Engagement model, contact Cindy Carlson at 757.728.3280 or ccarlson [at] hampton.gov.
Be sure to check out these websites: theyouth websitefor Hampton; a resource onHampton’s approach to young people; and the Hampton Planning Departmentfor copies of city planning documents.
