In the Fortifying Futures for Our Youth project, an intergenerational group of people from a diversity of backgrounds came together and forged a community. Linked by a closeness to the issues, connected by strong relationships, and led by youth brilliance, they co-created innovative and practical solutions for the obviation of youth incarceration and unstable housing.

The Fortifying Futures project has harvested a bounty of wisdom. These fruits come in the form of specific constellations of recommended actions, a belonging framework that offers an ever-applicable way of approaching issues like youth incarceration and unstably housed youth, and a lessons-learned trove of gleanings that make up a toolkit for future community work. Incubated in deep human connections and strengthened through struggle, this bounty is for anyone interested in community-knows-best solutions to complex societal issues.

This kind of work is hard. It probably should be, or it would not be authentic. Our current moment in history only intensifies the struggle that comes with this sort of project. It also amplifies the shared sense of purpose that comes from shouldering the honorable onus of convening to take on our hardest challenges. In so many ways, it is a heady privilege to be offered the opportunity to reclaim our humanity through work such as this.

Through the cultivation of belonging-based strategies, abundant thinking, youth leadership, and intergenerational collaboration, our project participants have envisioned a future where youth incarceration and youth homelessness are eradicated. To bring that future into being, funders, policymakers, and community leaders must listen, invest, and act—together.

Benjamin Danielson MD
Director of AHSHAY