Curriculum Helps Adults and Youth Build Authentic Partnerships

The Ele­vat­ing Youth Engage­ment (EYE) train­ing cur­ricu­lum is now avail­able online — at no cost. Devel­oped by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion in part­ner­ship with Cetera Inc., the cur­ricu­lum offers child wel­fare agen­cies and youth-serv­ing orga­ni­za­tions a clear, action­able guide to build­ing effec­tive, authen­tic part­ner­ships with young peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced fos­ter care.

For young lead­ers, EYE pro­vides the skills and con­fi­dence they need to advo­cate for them­selves and their peers — and to become informed, empow­ered par­tic­i­pants in shap­ing poli­cies and ser­vices that affect their lives.

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There are many frame­works for youth engage­ment — but EYE goes fur­ther. It’s a com­pre­hen­sive ​“how-to” cur­ricu­lum that offers con­crete strate­gies and real-time oppor­tu­ni­ties for adult sup­port­ers and young lead­ers to apply the lessons through exercises.

Code­signed and test­ed by young peo­ple with fos­ter care expe­ri­ence, includ­ing Jim Casey Fel­lows, the cur­ricu­lum draws on more than two decades of prac­tice across the Foun­da­tion’s Jim Casey Youth Oppor­tu­ni­ty Ini­tia­tive^® and its nation­al network.

The Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive uses a frame­work ground­ed in ado­les­cent brain sci­ence and deep expe­ri­ence part­ner­ing with young adults and pro­vid­ing youth lead­er­ship train­ing. Over the last 24 years, it has evolved from a recog­ni­tion of young people’s strength to a test­ed mod­el for part­ner­ship that deliv­ers results. Since 2001, the Jim Casey Ini­tia­tive and its net­work sites have helped influ­ence more than 390 pol­i­cy and prac­tice changes, with youth con­tribut­ing to 87% of those wins in 2024 alone.

Learn more about the Jim Casey Initiative

The EYE cur­ricu­lum puts this mod­el into action and aims to reflect what young peo­ple say they need to thrive and bring vital insights to improv­ing child wel­fare systems.

“We don’t talk enough about how tax­ing advo­ca­cy can be — espe­cial­ly when it involves trau­ma or work­ing with peo­ple who don’t rec­og­nize that young peo­ple have the right to set bound­aries,” said Antoinette Ruck­er, a Jim Casey Fel­low and senior youth engage­ment con­sul­tant at Cetera Inc., who led the devel­op­ment of the young lead­ers track. ​“I designed the track think­ing, ​‘These are the things I wish I had known sooner.’”

EYE includes every­thing you need to deliv­er the train­ing effec­tive­ly — whether as a full series or through stand­alone ses­sions tai­lored by audi­ence or topic:

• Pow­er­Point train­ing decks
• Facil­i­ta­tor guides
• Par­tic­i­pant handouts

It fea­tures three dis­tinct tracks and eight total mod­ules, orga­nized as follows:

Mod­ules for Adult Supporters

• Foun­da­tions of Authen­tic Youth Engage­ment: helps orga­ni­za­tions assess and expand how they engage young people.
• Coach­ing as a Youth Engage­ment Prac­tice: cov­ers shared deci­sion mak­ing and how to use coach­ing to sup­port youth goals.

Mod­ules for Young Leaders

• Youth Advo­ca­cy 101: helps young peo­ple build skills to advo­cate for them­selves and oth­ers, and edu­cates them on how child wel­fare poli­cies and prac­tices are shaped.
• Well­ness and Advo­ca­cy: offers tools to sup­port well­ness when young lead­ers are shar­ing their sto­ries, espe­cial­ly when these involve trau­mat­ic experiences.

Mod­ules for Com­bined Youth-Adult Audiences

• Val­ues and Authen­tic Youth Engage­ment: exam­ines how val­ues influ­ence iden­ti­ty, deci­sions and collaboration.
• Youth-Adult Part­ner­ships and Ado­les­cent Brain Devel­op­ment: explores the effects of fos­ter care on young people’s brain devel­op­ment and the pos­i­tive ben­e­fits of giv­ing agency and author­i­ty to young peo­ple who may have had lit­tle say in past deci­sions affect­ing their lives.
• Part­ner­ship to Action: pro­vides guid­ance on sup­port­ing young peo­ple before, dur­ing and after lead­er­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties — includ­ing compensation.
• Action Plan­ning for Authen­tic Youth Engage­ment: helps devel­op tai­lored youth engage­ment strate­gies and action plans.

“The Ele­vat­ing Youth Engage­ment cur­ricu­lum cap­tures what’s worked for our sites and part­ners across the coun­try and makes it more acces­si­ble,” said Alex Lohrbach, a senior asso­ciate with the Foundation’s Fam­i­ly Well-Being Strat­e­gy Group. ​“At the heart of the Jim Casey Initiative’s suc­cess is the belief that youth engage­ment should be mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial — not just about what young peo­ple bring, but also about how oppor­tu­ni­ties serve them.”

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