BDYC News Part 1

In September 2023, in accordance with our mission to strengthen communities through dialogue programs focused on amplifying the voices of marginalized youth, we were proud to launch the Beverly Dialogue Youth Corps, funded in part through a 3-year Cummings Foundation grant.  The BDYC fills an important gap in our city, namely, providing a paid, civic training and leadership program for under-served Beverly youth ages 12-18. We are excited to have launched the first city-wide program that centers the ideas and agency of marginalized youth, trains them in dialogue design and facilitation, connects them with local leaders and organizations, and pays them a generous stipend.

The BDYC is driven by two specific needs highlighted by recent research on youth. Our program follows research that demonstrates that the best way to insure that marginalized youth become active citizens and voters as adults is to engage them when they are young. The BDYC is unique in that it trains youth to use dialogue to address issues that divide communities, which can be a way to sustain hope in youth to continue to work for change throughout their lives. Beverly leaders of organizations who work with youth concur that youth are:

•  hungry to talk about difficult social issues in a way that connects them with others

•  eager to think more deeply about social identities in a way that empowers rather than victimizes them

•   longing to use their skills and energies to effect positive social change

Second, the BDYC is a way to address the prevalence of those mental health issues that are caused by a lack of belonging and connection to purpose and meaning. Research demonstrates how feeling a sense of belonging and purpose can protect youth from some mental health crises. Learning dialogue skills and utilizing it to make meaningful changes in one's community is a way to help youth feel both connected to one another and to their wider community. The transformative dimension of dialogue is due to its ability to forge genuine connections with others in a way that affirms both different lived experiences and our common humanity.

For the launch of the BDYC, Heathmere worked with Dr. André Morgan, Director of Opportunity, Access and Equity for the Beverly Public Schools, to film a promotional video that was then sent to all high school families in September to invite applications from the youth. Dr. Morgan also met with 8th grade students to show the video and invite them to apply. We were thrilled to have received 27 applications for 12 positions! After reviewing the applications and holding individual Zoom interviews with each youth, we selected 12 8th-12th graders.

We held our first workshop in November, to train youth in “Intergroup Dialogue,” a research-backed dialogue approach developed by the University of Michigan’s Program on Intergroup Relations. After 7 monthly training sessions, youth will be supported to collaborate with a local organization to design, implement, and co-facilitate 1 dialogue in May. Each dialogue will be limited to 10 participants that we will work together to hand-select. In June we will hold our final workshop to debrief and evaluate their dialogues and the entire BDYC first’s year.

Stay tuned for a follow up post on details of what youth are learning!