Providing Spark and Stability: The Role of Intermediary Organizations in Establishing School-Based Youth-Adult Partnerships

The term “youth-adult partnership” increasingly is being used to define a relationship in which both youth and adults have the potential to contribute to decision making processes, to learn from one another, and to promote change. Establishing a relationship with an intermediary organization can provide much needed stability and sustainability to youth-adult partnerships–especially in school settings. Rather than creating generalizable findings, this article focuses on hypothesis generation regarding the ways in which an intermediary organization can provide the needed training and support to school-based youth-adult partnerships. Using a combination of case-study and survey data, the study finds that youth-adult partnerships need help with: youth leadership skill development, team building, project development, and targeted training for adults. Technical assistance needs vary depending on whether groups need to create a spark that will build the idea of a youth-adult partnership or to create stability for a youth-adult partnership that has already been developed