America's Promise Alliance
The America’s Promise Alliance is a leader in forging a strong and effective partnership alliance committed to seeing that children experience the fundamental resources they need to succeed. The Alliance has developed a framework of Five Promises that young people need for success in life. The Five Promises are:
Caring Adults
All young people need the guidance and support of caring adults in their homes, their schools, and in their communities. The presence of caring adults in all of these aspects of a young person’s life is vital to healthy development.
Safe Places
In order to thrive, young people must feel physically and emotionally safe in their environments. This also means a need for a balance of structured and supervised activities with unstructured time. If safe and nurtured, young people are more likely to thrive and be successful.
A Healthy Start
Another underlying factor to success is the development of healthy bodies, minds, and habits. Health is a fundamental building block in youth development.
An Effective Education
Young people need to be intellectually stimulated and motivated in order to succeed. Engaging learning environments, the development of responsibility, guidance and mentoring are all important factors in lifelong learning and the development of work skills.
Opportunities to Help Others
Through service, young people can develop a sense of “other”, as well as personal responsibility. Helping others allows young people to contribute to their communities and the greater society. Service also allows young people to develop skills in leadership.
The 40 Development Assets
The Search Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities, has developed a list of 40 Developmental Assets that all young people should have.
The 40 Developmental Assets include external and internal assets and focus on skills related to support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, the constructive use of time, a commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. These Assets provide a holistic, structured approach for the field of youth development.
