What is the Youth Master Plan?
The Youth Master Plan is New Orleans’ opportunity to be deliberate about the potential of our youth and build pathways to make that potential a reality. The Youth Master Plan is a comprehensive roadmap for creating and sustaining a positive, youth-development focused, results-oriented New Orleans that works for all of our young people.
The Youth Master Plan brings together young people, parents, educators, community leaders and other key stakeholders to develop, implement, and monitor a ten-year, multisector plan for improving outcomes for our children and youth across Orleans Parish.
City leaders are ready to improve the future of children and youth across Orleans Parish.
What Was Our Approach to Developing a Youth Master Plan & How Will We Move Towards Action?
1. Center a Positive Youth Development Framework
The Youth Master Plan is about strengthening the assets, agency, contribution, and enabling environments that result in greater success for New Orleans children and youth, rather than focusing on “correcting problems.
Youth Master Plan Documents & Resources
2. Deliver on Every Need
The Youth Master Plan is about advancing bold cross-sector coordination that improves outcomes across the full spectrum of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Food, water, warmth, rest, health care, security and safety are a priority in setting the foundation for creating and sustaining a true community where everyone succeeds.
Youth Master Plan Documents & Resources
3. Promote Silo-Busting Strategies
The Youth Master Plan is about collaborating across systems, shifting the ways we do business at every level, and building forward together using positive youth development approaches that center on our youth.
A cross-sector Steering Committee launched in May 2020 and met monthly to guide the overarching Youth Master Plan process. Working Groups made up of organization, community, and youth leaders convened in October 2020 to build cross-cutting solutions. Each Working Group focused on a distinct developmental stage from birth to 24 years.
4. Youth Voice is at the Center & Youth Vision is the North Star
The Youth Master Plan is about being a city where the full self-expression, leadership, creativity, and culture of all children and youth comes together to create a true community where everyone succeeds. This is the way and the destination. The Youth Advisory Board of CYPB, the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council (MYAC), NOYA Youth Leadership Fellows, and other New Orleans youth led throughout the planning process as co-facilitators, narrative builders, content creators, event/discussion hosts, and co-authors.
Nearly 100 young people gathered online on June 27, 2020 to Flip the Script on the dominant narrative of New Orleans youth, setting the vision for the Youth Master Plan.
7. Develop Inclusive & Equitable Strategies
The Youth Master Plan is about actively using language that demonstrates value for all people, and facing disparities and inequities head on. Our young people represent a powerful, unified, diverse, socially conscious, intelligent network, capable of working with adults to lead New Orleans in becoming a more compassionate, just, and equitable city.
Youth Master Plan Data Tools identify our strengths and challenges across neighborhoods and compared to state and national levels.
5. Youth & Community Wisdom Are Our Greatest Assets
The Youth Master Plan is about advancing solutions that lift up youth and community wisdom. Youth have the necessary resources, skills and competencies to achieve desired outcomes. Their communities have the wisdom and solutions to support their growth.
Youth Master Plan Documents & Resources
8. Be Data-Informed & Measure Strengths
The Youth Master Plan is about using the best available data to understand how our city is taking care of children, youth, and their families, and to design cross-cutting solutions based on unmet needs. Our goal is to advance data tools and reports that measure progress from a strengths-based, data-informed perspective. Where strengths-based indicators exist, we will use them. Where there are gaps, we will work to create and expand the use of pro social metrics.
Youth Master Plan Data Tools build our shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing New Orleans children, youth, and their families.
Youth Master Plan Conveners established a partnership with the Center for Equity, Justice, and the Human Spirit at Xavier University of Louisiana to track and measure progress.
6. Coordinate & Strengthen What Exists + Raise Collective Awareness
The Youth Master Plan is about acknowledging and working with what currently exists, expanding our shared knowledge, investing in what we are getting right, updating and creating based on unmet needs, and innovating towards our shared youth vision for success.
Youth Master Plan Documents & Resources
9. Young People Exist Within Their Family & Community Contexts
The Youth Master Plan is about improving prosperity across all of life's domains for all children, youth, and their families. Caregiver, family, and community success set the foundation for youth success.
Youth Master Plan Documents & Resources
Explore Youth Master Plan Data
Keep Up With the Youth Master Plan
By participating in the Youth Master Plan process, you can ensure that existing resources are invested in, remaining gaps are filled, and custom solutions are centered in the roadmap.
Connect with us to stay updated on Youth Master Plan opportunities and information.
