CAFÉ TAC is excited to share a great new resource for youth looking to plan an authentically youth-driven event, or organizations trying to create a space for genuine youth-driven engagement, Cooking Up Youth Engagement: The CAFÉ TA Center Recipe for Youth Engagement Events, Inspired and Baked by The Florida Youth Council.
This document offers a “how-to” for a group of youth, or an organization, to empower young people to plan and implement an engagement in which youth come together for a common purpose, whether it be training, advocacy around a specific issue, relationship-building, fun, entertainment, and connection, activity planning and delivery, or other youth-related activities. By following the right recipe, youth (and those who support youth) will understand how to plan and implement programming in a youth-driven manner that genuinely empowers the youth voice.
In that spirit of youth-driven authenticity, CAFÉ TAC has created this guide in cooperation with The Florida Youth Council (FYC), another program that like CAFÉ TAC is part of a cross-disability nonprofit organization called The Family Café. The FYC hosts an Annual Youth Summit each year, and this tool uses the FYC’s Annual Youth Summit as a case example to demonstrate how youth can plan and deliver activities for youth, and do so in a thoughtful and effective manner.