My version of our elevator speech is this: “VOICES is a youth development agency that mentors in the documentary arts.” And then I proceed to define documentary arts as, “you know, photography, writing, videography, research and interviewing skills, etc. . . .” Then, if my listener still is paying attention, I add, “we also provide publishing platforms to share these stories with the world” and I recite our publishing partners: KUAZ, KXCI, Tucson Weekly, Arizona Daily Star, and the Downtown Tucsonan, among others.

I have my elevator speech memorized and I’m largely content with it. In the most simple terms, it explains who we are and what we do. 

But . . . does it? Thirty seconds is not much time to introduce nuance about the intricacies of anything, and people only have the capacity to hear so much at once. The term “youth development” keeps nagging at me because it’s not only the youth who are developing at VOICES, it’s all of us: adult staff, volunteer mentors, board members, AmeriCorps members, and hopefully the general public, too, who hear the stories we publish and grow in respect for the contributions young people can make to our community.

That’s why I prefer the term “people development” to “youth development,” though I know I don’t have much chance of redefining this terminology for the world. 

Considering how much I learn daily from my colleagues—who include the youth—and also from opportunities I’ve been given to provide leadership, it is disingenuous (and also slightly in conflict with our agency’s core value of equity) to define what we do as only youth development.

Take me, for example. I strive to be a more effective, compassionate and self-aware leader, among other things, and I actively seek new sources that can teach me how to do this every day, whether it comes in the form of peers or consultants or books. I am proud to say all of the adults who work here are engaged in a similar process of development. If they were not, they probably wouldn’t last long.

In most elevators I’ve ridden we all just stare silently and blankly at the numbers as they light up, a little anxious being in such close quarters with strangers, so it’s doubtful that I’m going to test my new-found definition of our work any time soon . . . and again, I am still thinking this through. But I will keep you posted, oh blogosphere. Stephanie