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Valuing Black Youth through Structured Engagement

Valuing Our Black Youth (VBY) is one component of a larger strategic priority to strengthen family and community values about youth behaviors.

It is a community engagement initiative that uses a process called Structured Engagement (SE) to:

• Restart “two-way” dialogue about the plight of African American Youth in Mississippi in which youth have the voice and autonomy to determine what they want and need.
• Help youth structure their engagement with caring adults and tell their own story.
• Promote healthy relationship-building between youths and adults. Encourage healthy lifestyles among youth.
• Generate data to support community-based programming for youth.

Structured Engagement employs honest and open communication, collaboration and coordination of effort to help participants engage issues, problems, situations, etc. on specific topics; and it uses a set of principles that teaches them how to interrogate, construct and organize their concerns by mutual consent.