Cultivating Care: How to Engage with Young People in Civic Life
Our newest report, Cultivating Care: How & Why Young People Participate in Civic Life, explores young people’s civic lives in the context of care—how they seek and gain knowledge, detangle complex identities from narrow labels, and engage in dialogue and action in ways that feel safe and productive. This post is the fifth in a series that showcases our latest findings, many of which are excerpted directly from the report. Read more about Cultivating Care here.
Like so many aspects of young people’s lives, interactions and relationships with peers and trusted adults shape their political and civic lives. Our data show that young people are more likely to care about, engage with, or act on issues when they:
- have more frequent political discussions with friends and trusted adults
- have more positive civic conversations with adults
- find agreement among trusted adults, friends, and religious leaders
- encounter disagreement safely and civilly with the freedom to learn, question, and grow
Yet, interviews with young people show how challenging it can be to discuss complex and social issues. When young people engage in exchanges that feel uncooperative or reactionary, they feel less free to express their care authentically, if at all. Adults play an important role in helping young people to cultivate care and can take deliberate steps to foster this growth. Using our data, we created the CARE framework, which outlines four distinct areas that adults can use to support young people as they work to strengthen their political and civic identities.
Captivate: Young people come to care about issues that captivate their attention and resonate with their experiences and values. Create and introduce opportunities to expose young people to social and political issues through practices such as mealtime conversation, volunteer work, classroom lessons, online resources, and documentaries.
Activate: Young people act on their care when linked to networks and organizations that enable them to do so. To translate young people’s awareness into action, provide opportunities as well as connections to people and organizations already invested in urgent issues.
Relate: Young people explore how to care within the context of trustworthy relationships characterized by humility, empathy, respect, and active listening. Enter conversations with young people with a sense of curiosity, refrain from interrupting, and show vulnerability by acknowledging the limits of your viewpoint.
Educate: Caring requires knowing. With so many sources of information available, young people can feel overwhelmed trying to sort fact from fiction. Accompany them as they learn and decode information.
In thinking about practical ways to active CARE, we invited members of our Springtide Research Advisory Board to reflect on how trusted adults can interact on important issues with the young people in their lives and communities.
Dr. Melinda Denton
My church regularly offers book studies or classes related to these issues. The “Green Team” is one of the church ministry groups devoted to helping the church reduce its environmental impact and encourage environmental stewardship among the congregation. The church hosts a weekly medical clinic for unhoused individuals in the community. While these efforts are primarily aimed at adults, I think it is valuable for the young people to see the adults in the congregation prioritizing these issues and taking practical steps to engage with them.
Rabbi Julia Appel
Among the various kinds of Jewish institutions, there is generally a big emphasis on civic engagement, including the importance of voting and volunteering as well as advocacy efforts around social issues like education, equity, health care, and more. Creating opportunities for modeling respectful and relational dialogue, even with panels of people who may disagree, can have a profound effect on young people especially. Dialogue around difference, for me, is what is most important in civic engagement right now given the polarization of political life in America.
Learn more about how adults can cultivate CARE in our newest report, Cultivating Care: How & Why Young People Participate in Civic Life.
