Overview
The Center for Youth Studies (CYS) is a global network of youth ministry professionals committed to developing a comprehensive resource for youth work that is current, relevant, and geared for grass roots application. We believe that holistic ministry with youth, children and families demands a broad collaboration of social systems, organizations and leaders. The systems to which we refer are family and youth, community (both non-profit and for-profit), government organizations, schools, media, church and parachurch youth ministry. Moreover, CYS offers a place where youth and those who care about youth can go for free resources and information tailored to their vocational and practical needs. We do not promote any one organization over another but focus especially on providing for ethnic minorities, urban workers, and youth workers around the world for whom many resources are unavailable. Moreover, while we are grounded in the Judeo-Christian faith, we welcome people of all faiths.
*We are pleased to announce that we have come under the auspices of the Urban Youth Workers Institute (www.uywi.org). While our website will remain, check UYWI's as they redo theirs and integrate the Encyclopedia!
Mission Our mission is to provide relevant informational resources and promote global collaboration towards a comprehensive systems approach to ministry with youth. Vision We hope to be an interactive partner with youth workers both locally and around the world. Further, we envision the CYS website as a “first-aid” to practitioners and parents, a first step in study or research for students and professors, as well as a clearinghouse for all those in youth ministry.
Our definition of "youth"
Youth is arguably the most critical age in human development. It is the age in which identity and values are clarified, and life future course charted. To understand youth one must understand the social systems of family, community, schools, media and peers—and the interaction of these systems. Youth are the signpost of a society, the pulse beat of a culture.
Arguments about the defined age of youth bear little fruit. Each culture determines whether the age is 12-21 (the US), or 15-25 (the UN), or 13-35 (in Africa and other places). We take youth to be simply the transitional age between childhood and adulthood, whatever the boundaries of these stages in any society. This also solves the problem as to whether youth is a natural universal stage of human development or merely a social construct. Either way, children do not, and have never, jumped into adulthood in a single leap (be it a bar mitzvah or tribal initiation or a western rite of getting drunk or losing one’s virginity).
Research and reflection point to the importance of adult mentoring, the support of community, youths' empowerment and the opportunity for successful achievement. When, added to such a foundation, the values of the social systems surrounding youth are congruent, youth are not at risk. When they are incongruent, as we find increasingly in contemporary societies, youth are at risk. This website is dedicated to those who care about youth and desire to promote their healthy development.
