Individual Leadership: Personal Responsibility and Group Membership

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Underlying YouthBuild Values and Philosophy
  3. YouthBuild Program Design Standards
  4. 2008 YouthBuild Program Performance Standards
  5. Honors Graduates
  6. The Process for Changing the YouthBuild Model or Requirements
  7. Working Definitions of Important Terms Related to These Standards
  8. Appendix

2008 YouthBuild Annual Report to the General Assembly (pdf)

2008 YouthBuild Annual Report to the General Assembly (HTML Version)

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Personal responsibility and leadership are hard to measure. The performance standards now include one easily measurable leadership development measure: voter registration. Other than this measure, goals would be the following.

Students would:

  • Have 90 percent attendance, without lateness
  • Fulfill their school and program objectives
  • Take care of their children
  • Stay out of legal trouble
  • Resolve past legal troubles
  • Give up their addictions
  • Improve their family relationships
  • Learn how to resolve conflicts peaceably
  • Express their opinions fully and respectfully
  • Learn how to negotiate on their own behalf
  • Keep their promises

Additional goals could include ensuring that, if students join a committee or any task force, they would attend reliably and follow through on all commitments.

Thus far these have not been measured because tracking them for each student would place an enormous burden on each program. However, the outcome measures related to attendance, retention, job placement, and educational achievement indirectly measure personal responsibility and group membership; high standards generally cannot be reached in those areas unless personal growth is occurring.