Development of Junior Youth

Program of development of junior youth and youth in the neighborhoods, Moscow, 2016-2017

Goal: promoting development of neighborhood community in which local people collaborate and take responsibility for their own material and spiritual prosperity.

Main idea: to use an integral educational system aimed at three age groups: children, junior youth and adults. It is an educational program that helps to improve capabilities and skills necessary for personal development of an individual, as well as for the improvement of the world around him, in collaboration with existing formal and informal organizations that are also concerned with the betterment of the world.

Role of youth: Youth are the most responsive group of population who more than others are willing to direct their energy into action when they find out about contribution they can make for the betterment of society. Their interest ignites when they realize that the physical and spiritual strength they possess at this point in their life can be directed to meet the needs of other people, especially younger generations. Youth also support each other in this regard, coming together in groups to engage in further study and discuss their service, to reinforce one another’s efforts and build resolve, looking to ever extend the circle of friendship more widely. The encouragement offered in this way by a network of peers provides young people with a much-needed alternative to those siren voices that beckon towards the snares of consumerism and compulsive distractions, as well as a counter to the calls to demonize others. It is against this backdrop of enervating materialism and splintering societies that the junior youth programme reveals its particular value at this time. It offers the youth an ideal arena in which to assist those younger than themselves to withstand the corrosive forces that especially target them.

How the Junior Youth Programme influences the social reality of the area in which it is used:

Being the most active part of the neighborhood, the youth receives a system of skills and qualities, as well as a motivation that enable them consciously and on a long term basis to devote part of their time and energy to the selfless service to the society in their neighborhood, including participating in existing volunteer projects as well as creating a positive environment for the development of junior youth.

Teenagers, who are usually little involved in the implementation of social projects, have the opportunity together with a group of peers and with the support of an animator to participate in socially significant activities (implementing their own projects of good deeds), as well as to gain a picture of the surrounding reality, which includes values such as selfless service to their near ones, cooperation, concern for others and material and spiritual prosperity of the neighborhood in which they live. When these junior youth reach 15 years of age, they have a strong motivation and the experience necessary to participate in existing voluntary programs.

As a result, in the neighborhood there are less (especially among youth and junior youth) signs of an unhealthy atmosphere as alcoholism and drug addiction, swearing, violence, crime. In contrast, there are more cooperation and mutual assistance, chaste relationship, selfless involvement in socially meaningful activities.