External Assets

The first 20 developmental assets focus on positive experiences that young people receive from the people and institutions in their lives. Four categories of external assets are included in the framework:

• Support-Young people need to experience support, care, and love from their families, neighbours, and many others. They need organizations and institutions that provide positive, supportive environments.

• Empowerment-Young people need to be valued by their community and have opportunities to contribute to others. For this to occur, they must be safe and feel secure.
  
• Boundaries and expectations-Young people need to know what is expected of them and whether activities and behaviors are "in bounds" and "out of bounds."
  
• Constructive use of time-Young people need constructive, enriching opportunities for growth through creative activities, youth programs, congregational involvement, and quality time at home.

Internal Assets

A community's responsibility for its young does not end with the provision of external assets. There needs to be a similar commitment to nurturing the internal qualities that guide choices and create a sense of centeredness, purpose, and focus. Indeed, shaping internal dispositions that encourage wise, responsible, and compassionate judgments is particularly important in a society that prizes individualism. Four categories of internal assets are included in the framework:

• Commitment to learning -Young people need to develop a lifelong commitment to education and learning.
• Positive values -Youth need to develop strong values that guide their choices.
  
• Social competencies - Young people need skills and competencies that equip them to make positive choices, to build relationships, and to succeed in life.
  
• Positive identity - Young people need a strong sense of their own power, purpose, worth, and promise.

Boys & Girls Club Services of Greater Victoria have always been committed to enhancing the quality of life for youth and their families. We must find ways to provide our youth with a community that cares about them, values them and involves them, that recognizes their needs and responds to them.

Here are some of the images we currently envision of an asset-building community...

• All residents build caring relationships with children and adolescents and express this caring through dialogue, listening, commending positive behavior, knowing their names, acknowledging their presence, involving them in decision making, and doing things with them.

• Families elevate asset development to top priority for their own children and their children's friends.

• Religious institutions mobilize their capacity for inter-generational relationships, parent education, value development, quality structured opportunities, and service to the community.

• Schools place priority on becoming caring environments for all students, provide additional opportunities for the nurture of values deemed crucial by the community, strengthen co-curricular activities, and use connection to parents to escalate parental involvement and reinforce the importance of family attention to assets.

• Youth organizations train leaders and volunteers in asset-building strategies.

• Businesses that employ teenagers address the assets of support, boundaries, values, and social competencies. Employers develop family-friendly policies and provide mechanisms for employees to build relationships with youth.

• Through policy, training, and resource allocation, city government moves asset development to top priority.