Scaling A Youth Advocacy Program

Bravehearts MOVE NY, New York State

2021

New Tomorrow worked with Bravehearts MOVE NY to support the development of “Bravechange Learning Exchange,” which comprises of training curricula and digital tools that would allow for the replication of Bravehearts at an organizational and state-level. With funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the NYS Office of Children and Families, the objective of replicating Braveheart’s approach is to promote family and youth-driven practices.

Bravehearts is the first authentically youth-led nonprofit organization in New York State, working to amplify, empower and support youth to transform the child welfare/family regulation system.

Rooted in the vision of Bravehearts, we wrote a training curriculum for prospective youth advocates and provider agencies. We developed a Youth Advocate training with 22 lesson plans covering topics from youth movements in history, to having courageous conversations with supervisors and building a broad youth movement. The Administrator training has 12 lessons from reviewing the evidence on peer-to-peer supports, to being an adult ally, to developing partnerships to drive organizational practices.

 In addition to the training, we developed a slate of digital assessment tools to support Braveheart’s ability to provide technical assistance towards replicating the model. We developed an organizational self-assessment that measures the level of youth-driven culture, an organizational readiness scoring tool, a post-training youth advocate survey, and customized online reports.

Lastly, we produced two promotional videos to be used online and in training sessions to gain buy-in from agency leaders and youth who are considering adopting the Bravehearts approach.