February has been full of activity for the FEEST fam!
We were nominated to be highlighted at Youth Tell All: Youth Development In King County! This event was a collaborative effort between United Way of King County and Soar, who gathered a commission of BIPOC youth to lead themselves through an in-depth research project.
The project had one main goal and question to answer:
What can be done to make youth development better?
Based on this question, youth interviewed dozens of youth in programs & organizations and researched current and best practices for developing young people, all while writing a report that presented their findings and recommendations.
The image is of the Youth Tell All Event Flyer
The image is of the cover of the Youth Development in King County Report.
Those recommendations are:
- Make young people integral to all decision-making, implementation, evaluation, and feedback processes.
- It is vital to develop healthy and safe, as well as honest and consistent, relationships with young people.
- Our decision-makers should represent our communities.
- Build authentic relationships with our communities while centering the experiences of the people most affected.
- Pay us for the ideas, time, labor, and leadership we contribute to your organization.
While the Youth Commission dove headfirst into research, FEEST was identified to be an organization that is ALREADY living in the recommendations that they’ve found!
Our very own Jaimée Marsh spoke on FEEST’s foundation, how we cook up our special sauce, the importance of paying young people above minimum wage, our intentional decision on re-shifting our work to organizing, and how young people play an integral role in making change in our communities.
We highly recommend that everyone take the time to read the report, which highlights major recommendations, created by youth, for youth, and how to implement them inside of our organizations.
FEEST was honored to be a part of this event! We’re looking forward to the landscape of youth development transforming based on this research, and we are proud to already be living in these values. HUGE thank you to the Youth Commission for having the courage to call out the failures of our system, and how to change it to best develop our youth.
You can learn more about this event by reading United Way of King County’s Recap!