Advocacy

BSCO’s Advocacy component teaches youth about advocacy in order to empower them and give them a voice and a platform to affect change in their community. BSCO accomplishes this goal with the Youth Advocacy Council (YAC) where youth ages 12-18, are able to conduct community assessments, develop program plans, and implement services based on their findings. 

YES Curriculum: The YES curriculum that will be used is specifically designed to be driven by youth voice.  Youth in the YES program work to change the entire community as a way to prevent youth violence.  In YES, youth are a part of the solution, they have power to make decisions about how to make their community more peaceful and stop youth violence. 

Community Assessment & Planning:  Information collected through the youth surveys will be used to inform some of the pressing topics facing our youth and their impact.  Then, a series of focus groups will be conducted.  During the focus groups youth will be broken into working groups to discuss the issues that are most important to them, and based upon the requirements of an advocacy program, develop a program model that they would like to see implemented through the YAC. If more than one design emerges, the staff will determine if they can be merged into one common goal.  If that is not possible, the students will vote, and the design with the highest number of votes will be implemented during the year.