Teen Asset Building

Updated: June 6th, 2008

Can Anything Be Done to Increase the Assets Young People Experience?

The answer is a resounding and hopeful yes! Adults and youth--in big and small ways--can help increase Developmental Assets in the daily lives of young people. What’s needed is an understanding of what actions and behaviors breed success, willingness and ideas to apply that knowledge, and most importantly, a desire to see young people grow up happy, healthy, and confident.

“Asset-building” is the Institute’s term for purposefully helping youth experience more assets in their lives is happening in hundreds of communities by thousands of people across North America. Youth and adults in big cities and small towns understand in growing numbers the awesome power they have in making positive and lasting impact on the lives of young people. Individually and together, they are actively engaged in the movement to grow healthy communities and healthy youth.

The Power of Assets

On one level, the 40 Developmental Assets represent everyday wisdom about positive experiences and characteristics for young people. In addition, Search Institute research has found that these assets are powerful influences on adolescent behavior-both protecting young people from many different problem behaviors and promoting positive attitudes and behaviors. This power is evident across all cultural and socioeconomic groups of youth. There is also evidence from other research that assets have the same kind of power for younger children.

Protecting Youth from High-Risk Behaviors

Assets have tremendous power to protect youth from many different harmful or unhealthy choices. To illustrate this power, these charts show that youth with the most assets are least likely to engage in four different patterns of high-risk behavior, based on surveys of almost 150,000 6th- to 12th-grade youth in 202 communities across the United States in calendar year 2003.

The same kind of impact is evident with many other problem behaviors, including tobacco use, depression and attempted suicide, antisocial behavior, school problems, driving and alcohol, and gambling.

Promoting Positive Attitudes and Behaviors

In addition to protecting youth from negative behaviors, having more assets increases the chances that young people will have positive attitudes and behaviors, as these charts show.

A New Possibility

Many participating teens arrive in a resistant, without trust and skeptical. believing that education is a failed possibility in their lives, that they either lack the skills to master the experience or believe the educational system has let them down and impossible to remedy.

Our objective is to offer a new possibility. They share their experiences and frustrations, and they become aware that they are not alone, we separate the problem from the individual and apply techniques to the problem which turn it into an opportunity. We offer tools that expand their social competency skills, create positive identity, problem solving ability, and desire for a lifetime of learning.

Team Building Exercises

By means of our interactive team building group exercises, positive reinforcement, and non-shaming methods, we experience great success in igniting a desire for success. Our tools motivate everyone involved including facilitators. We use the latest positively reinforced educational modules which activate visual, auditory, intellectual and physical stimulation.

Each module builds upon the next, guiding the teens through positive experience and guidance in overcoming obstacles, questioning limiting beliefs, developing creative decision making, personal expression, conflict resolution, team building exercises, community awareness, etc. Our intention is to stimulate the desire for a life of curiosity, education, self-empowerment and success.

Participant Benefit

We introduce workshop attendees to community resources that offer free tutoring programs, job internships, food, shelter, counseling and a variety of other services intended to get teens on their feet and in touch with their individual power, talents, abilities, and unique value.

Each attendee receives a “Life Tools” booklet which presents an overview of topics presented in the workshop, and provides additional tools to assist in making better choices in their lives.

In addition, they also receive, a “Community Resource” booklet, containing school programs, GED assistance, internships, food, clothing, shelter, counseling, child care, and other goods and services offered by talented and generous organizations, corporations, and community groups.