YE and Health Promotion
Youth engagement has many health promotion benefits. These include:
- Getting the youth involved in community work and volunteering
- Hanging out with friends, camaraderie
- Learning new skills
- Getting youth and adults excited
- Building developmental assets
- Developing relationships with other students
- Adults developing relationships with students
- School connectedness
What are the benefits of youth engagement for health promotion?
There are many practical and ethical reasons for youth engagement. These include:
Reason 1: Youth engagement responds to the Ontario Public Health Standards, along with other provincial and federal priorities.
Reason 2: Youth engagement puts the Healthy School Model into practice. Link to the Healthy School Model
Reason 3: Youth engagement leads to more effective programs and services. Involving young people in the design, implementation, and evaluation of programs and services makes these programs and services more accessible and responsive to young people’s needs and priorities (London et al., 2003).
Reason 4: Youth engagement enhances protective factors and resiliency among youth. Young people can catalyze positive change in the settings in which they live, learn, work, and play (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002; Delgado & Zhou, 2008). This can enhance protective factors for all youth in your community. Being involved also benefits young people; youth who are engaged tend to have a greater sense of control, empowerment, meaning, and connectedness and other social and emotional capacities that enhance well-being and reduce the likelihood of risk-taking behaviours than their peers (see for example CEYE, 2003; Oliver et al., 2006; Clea, 2002; CCSA, 2009).
Reason 5: Youth engagement respects young people’s rights. Youth engagement also responds to young people’s desire to be heard and to take part in decisions that affect their lives (Ungar, 2007), as well as their right to be actively involved in such decisions (UN, 1989; Pereira, 2007; Sabo, 2003).