Youth Participation in Planning and the Development of Competence for Environmental Action: A Multiple Case Study of the Great Outdoors Colorado Inspire Initiative

Rebecca Colbert (University of Colorado)

The relationship between individuals and their living environments reciprocally influences both human well-being and the well-being of the planet. Young people are particularly dependent on the affordances that local environments provide to support their healthy development, however, they are seldom included in community decision-making processes regarding how resources should be allocated to optimize these interactions. Young people also often lack opportunities to develop the competence to take effective action to influence the quality of the contexts in which they live.

One avenue that researchers have suggested may lead to young people's acquisition of the requisite knowledge and skills to take effective environmental action is through participation in community-based planning efforts; however, the fine-grained characteristics of such processes and the mechanisms through which they influence the development of competence have not been systematically investigated.

I present a multiple case study of twelve discrete youth participatory planning processes that were simultaneously undertaken by coalitions of organizations in 2016 as part of the Great Outdoors Colorado Inspire Initiative, a pilot grant program aimed at improving children's access to nature in six regions throughout the state.

Through analysis of qualitative data gathered from program documents and open-ended retrospective interviews with 46 participants, this study systematically compares the normative, structural, operational, physical, attitudinal and contextual dimensions of these processes. A cross-case analysis of the outcomes achieved through each of the processes is presented in relationship to these dimensions.

Based on this analysis, each of the youth participatory planning processes is located in a newly introduced conceptual model by the degree to which they exhibited “planning focused” versus “learning focused” approaches to youth participation. Lessons for practitioners about the characteristics of “balanced” participatory processes through which youth were able to successfully achieve both tangible and intangible outcomes to benefit themselves and their communities are summarized.