Empowering Youth Voice, Live From the Bridge Conference 2012

By Sam Piha

Many of us know the importance of building youth-adult partnerships and involving youth as leaders in our programs, but we also know that this view is not widely held and little is written about how exactly to do this. Clearly, many of our discussions are absent of youth voice in helping us guide this work. 

Eric Gurna

Eric Gurna of Development Without Limits moderated an impressive panel of youth who talked about building youth and adult partnerships at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. This session was conducted at the recent School's Out Bridge conference in Seattle, WA. Development Without Limits provides an audio tape of this session in their series entitled Please Speak Freely. We were very inspired by what we heard and urge adult and youth leaders within afterschool programs to give this a listen. The session is entitled Empowering Youth Voice, Live From the Bridge Conference 2012. Click here to listen or download the presentation. The podcast is also available on iTunes. 

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Eric Gurna is the founder and Executive Director of Development Without Limits. He sets the overall vision for the organization's work, develops and guides new projects, and represents Development Without Limits in the national education and youth development arena. 

Eric designs and facilitates staff development, curriculum, and other resources for community organizations and schools on topics including youth development, experiential learning, literacy, leadership, communication, and organizational development. In addition, he designs and directs youth programs, including Project Unity, an internship program during which teenagers create and perform plays based on their own experiences and ideas.