Engaging Young Adolescents in Social Action Through Photovoice

TLDR

The Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) project is an afterschool empowerment program for underserved early adolescents that centers on civic engagement opportunities with peers around shared concerns in schools and neighborhoods. This article examines Photovoice as a promising method to engage youth in social change. Photovoice is implemented by having participants take photos of environmental strengths and issues, write about them, and use these artifacts to facilitate critical dialogue and develop collective action plans. Early adolescents in the YES!

Abstract

The Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) project is an afterschool empowerment program and research project for underserved early adolescents. Central to YES! is an empowerment intervention that provides early adolescents with opportunities for civic engagement with other youth around issues of shared concern in their schools and neighborhoods. This article specifically focuses on the use of Photovoice as a promising way to engage youth in social change as they take photos capturing strengths and issues in their environment and use these as the basis of critical dialogue and collective action plans. Adding to a growing body of information on using Photovoice, this article reports how early adolescents in the YES! afterschool program experienced the Photovoice process, moving from photography and writing to initiate group-designed social action projects. Recommendations are offered for others engaged in empowerment work with early adolescents.