You are passionate, committed, creative, resourceful, resilient, and powerful. We want to know your story as a youth-serving professional or volunteer!
About the Survey
Millions of professionals and volunteers work with young people every day in the many settings where youth play, learn, and grow outside of the school day. Yet, we have little collective information about this essential workforce.
We want to know more about those who are still in the youth fields and those who left, so that we can explore, define, and elevate this collective workforce and their work with youth. The information from the Power of Us Workforce Survey can also lead to action, informing policy, practice, and further research to better support the workforce.
We believe that if we know more, we can do more.
What inspires me and motivates me to stay in this field is closing the opportunity gap and being able to provide opportunities I didn’t have growing up.
Seeing that these kids are going to grow up being able to say, “Oh, I can ask a question, and if I’m wrong, it’s okay. I can move on, I can still keep asking.” That to me is very, very important—that’s what inspires me.
I want to leave the world a better place and the kids motivate me every day. We need to invest in the growth of our youth; they are facing such a different world.
This work is my way of giving back. I love the youth. I remember how important it was to have a youth center when I was growing up.
I think what makes after school special is that students have a space where they can be themselves. But also, it’s a place where we can be ourselves.
It’s the greatest job that I can recall I’ve ever had in terms of the passion. Me and my partner talk about how when we get up everyday, we don’t need alarm clocks. Our passion literally wakes us up, and the days go really fast because we’re actually having an impact on young people’s lives.
About Our Fields
