Richard Todd, Vice President, Community Development and Center for Indian Country Development for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis gave led a closing plenary session at the CDS/IACD conference in Minneapolis entitled, “Today’s Places, Tomorrow’s People: Recent Findings on Youth Development and Intergenerational Mobility,” where he shared a lot of information about the relationship between place and youth success in life.

What are the implications of this research for the communities you work with?

How do you begin to address these place issues in ways that increase opportunities for youth success long-term?

Using the Mississippi-based Southern Entrepreneurship Program (SEP) as a working example, James Wilcox from the University of Southern Mississippi and Brent Hales from the University of Minnesota explore a number of recommendations on local capacity building through high school teacher training and the establishment of community coalitions to assist in the comprehensive provision of experiential youth entrepreneurship education.

How would you see this kind of program working your community?

Are there other ways that you are engaging youth in their own development?