Higher Hopes:  The IDEAL is to
Identify, Develop, Educate, Advocate and Lead.
REDEFINING "COOL" BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

Guiding Philosophy and Training Methodology

Another level of the Identify domain involves the ability of Higher Hopes to identify indigenous leadership and like-minded partners and social entrepreneurs that embody similar energy and interest of facilitating a major, social reconstruction project.  This would entail embracing a methodology and guiding philosophy that is in alignment with Higher Hopes’ theoretical framework.  This theoretical framework would include strength based, philosophies and methodologies with a foundation and blue print that leads to high optimism and hopes, resilience building and transformative outcomes.  After reviewing hundreds of program models, philosophies and “best-practices,”  “Kids At Hope” and “Advanced Youth Development” were the best fits.  Therefore, we embraced these philosophies and practices to keep us grounded in this social reconstruction process.

Kids At Hope

Kids at Hope philosophy suggest that all kids can succeed with no exceptions. They have a comprehensive philosophy of Hope, a training methodology and a great support network.

“WE BELIEVE – WE CONNECT – WE TIME TRAVEL”

The “Kids at Hope” philosophy is a framework for  a holistic child and youth development cultural strategy that ensures children are surrounded with caring adults who believe, connect and help them learn to mentally time travel. Those efforts represent Kids at Hope’s Three Universal Truths. Research has shown that if children are surrounded by adults who believe and practice the Three Universal Truths, their chances of growing up successful, hopeful and optimistic are greatly increased.

We Believe
Universal Truth #1: Children succeed when they are surrounded by adults who believe they can succeed, No Exceptions.

We Connect
Universal Truth #2: Children succeed when they have meaningful and sustainable relationships with caring adults. We recognize this truth by describing the Four Aces.

Advancing Youth Development (AYD) Partnership

The Advancing Youth Development (AYD) Partnership offers professional development for youth workers. Using a train-the-trainer model, teams of trainers from a variety of youth serving organizations are recruited, trained and then supported in the provision of AYD trainings in their home counties or regions.

The Advancing Youth Development (AYD) curriculum was developed by the center for Youth Development and Policy research, in Washington, DC, and sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It was written in collaboration with National Network for Youth, Inc. and is designed for direct service youth workers.

Advancing Youth Development: A Curriculum for Training Youth Workers
The Advancing Youth Development: A Curriculum for Training Youth Workers (AYD) is used by facilitators to deliver youth development trainings to youth workers.

The curriculum has four broad learning goals. Participants in the training program will:

• Gain familiarity with the youth development approach and use this approach to explore, share, and learn new strategies for working with young people.
• Strengthen their ability to communicate their ideas, expertise and experience to their constituencies: board members, families, co-workers, community leaders, and youth.
• Discuss practical strategies for integrating a youth development approach into their programs.
• Form an informal network and become ongoing resources to each other.

Through NTI's National Training of Facilitators' (TOF) Program, BEST facilitators learn to deliver the 28-hour AYD curriculum in a seven session format:

• Session 1: Introduction to the Youth Development Approach
• Session 2: Developmental Youth Outcomes: The Bottom Line of Youth Workers
• Session 3: Cultural Assumptions and Stereotypes About Young People: From Adultism to Caring Adults
• Session 4: Strategies of Youth Participation
• Session 5: Opportunities and Supports for Youth Development: Identifying Best Program Practices
• Session 6: Core Competencies of Youth Workers
• Session 7: Review, Practice, and Celebration

AYD is a youth development philosophy that provides a powerful shift from a focus on youth as problems and deficits toward a view of young people as resources with strengths and contributions. Youth workers learn from the best thinking in the youth development field, share promising approaches, and discuss the values and principles which guide the youth worker. AYD training will allow youth workers to obtain skills to match the critical challenges of youth development. Participants are required to have attended an Advancing Youth Development training.

Both Kids at Hope and AYD have strength based approaches and comprehensive methodologies designed to influence the way that we view and think about our youth as well as youth development strategies. Kids At Hope offer a way to interweave positive youth development into the culture of an entire community with a role for everyone.  AYD offers a systematic way to conceive and develop strength based youth programs.  Both of these guides were direct fits for Higher Hopes and provide a vision to conceive the entire process.  For example, Higher Hopes programs are designed to facilitate strength and evidenced based processes that build resilience leading to transformative outcomes as well as “At Hope Communities”.  The tagline of our mission is to “Redefine Cool By Any Means necessary.  What is “cooler” than entire communities supporting the positive development of its children?  

Along with selecting evidence based philosophies and methodologies and understanding that we could not do the groundwork by ourselves, we were challenged with selecting programmatic partners that shared our same philosophy toward youth and community development as well as resilience and transformation as end goals. We selected Pin Points, Inc., The Powell House Project and Society Stars as our three programmatic partners.