Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

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Children and Youth Services Review

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / c h i l d yo u t h

Toward a theory of change in community-based practice with youth:

A case-study exploration
Robert J. Chaskin
The University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 969 East Sixtieth Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 3 July 2009
Accepted 7 July 2009
Available online 16 July 2009
Keywords:
Youth development
Community
Theory of change
Evaluation
Community-based organizations
Youth participation

a b s t r a c t
Community organizations are potentially important mechanisms to support the well-being of children,
youth, and their families in ways that are responsive and appropriate to their particular circumstances and
with reference to the context of the neighborhoods in which they live. They do this, in part, by engaging with
those with whom they seek to work in multiple ways: formally and informally, through a broad range of
intervention strategies, activities, and programs, and by establishing ongoing, day-to-day interactions that
are both exible and grounded in an understanding of local context, individual needs, and community
circumstances. However, given the complexity and ambiguity of the inputs and the breadth of their intended
outcomes, understanding the impact that such organizations may have is problematic. This paper provides a
brief case-study description in an effort to begin to tease out the inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes in
one particular example of community-based practice. In particular, it seeks to identify and begin to
investigate the range and nature of intermediate outcomes that may be posited to lead to the broader
outcomes at the individual, family, and community level that such organizations often seek to effect.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The local community has long been a target of intervention for
addressing the needs of children and families, particularly those living
under disadvantaged circumstances (e.g., Halpern, 1995; Miller, 1981).
Currently, community is again ascendant as an organizing principle
for social intervention in a number of arenasfrom housing to health
to child protection to economic developmentincluding a broad
range of practices and initiatives focused explicitly on the well-being
of children and families. This current focus on communitiesin the
United States taking place in the context of signicant decentralization
and privatization (e.g., Marwell, 2004)has come about for several
reasons. First is the recognition that the needs and circumstances of
(especially poor) children and families are often interrelated, and that
categorical approaches to addressing them are often insufcient
(Gardner, 1989; Levitan, Mangum, & Pines, 1989; Schorr, 1988; Wilson,
1987). Second is a belief among many funders of social programs that
local communities are where these needs and circumstances come
together, and where they can be best addressed (Chaskin, 1998). Third
is the increasing availability of research supporting the notion that
indeed, for children and youth in particular, community context
matters (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn, & Connell, 1997; Blythe &
Leffert, 1995; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Garbarino, 1992; Sampson,
Morenoff and Gannon-Rowly, 2002). Fourth is the notion that local

E-mail address: rjc3@uchicago.edu.

0190-7409/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2009.07.012

communities have assets to bring to bear on these problems, and that

they can be mobilized to do so (Chaskin, Brown, Venkatesh, & Vidal,
2001; Gittell & Vidal, 1998; Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993; Warren,
2001).
In light of these convictions, social workers, community development professionals, organizers, and advocates of various stripes have
been engaged in a broad range of approaches and activities in local
communitiesfrom assessment and planning to development and
service provision to organizing and social actionthat come under the
rubric of community practice or community intervention (Rothman, 1995; Weill & Gamble, 1995). A subset of these activities,
focusing on direct practice within community contexts, has been
dened as community-based practice, which integrate[s] direct
services with skills traditionally associated with community organization and community development (Johnson, 2001: 58).
Community organizations, from youth organizations to family
resource centers to multi-service agencies, provide an important
organizational setting in which such community-based practice
occurs, and they represent potentially important mechanisms to
support the well-being of children, youth, and their families in ways
that are responsive and appropriate to their particular circumstances
and with reference to the context of the neighborhoods in which they
live. They do this, in part, by engaging with those with whom they
seek to work in multiple ways: formally and informally, through a
broad range of intervention strategies, activities, and programs, and by
establishing ongoing, day-to-day interactions that are both exible
and grounded in an understanding of local context, individual needs,

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R.J. Chaskin / Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

and community circumstances. Such organizations often espouse a

developmental rather than remedial worldview and approach to
practice, and emphasize holism, responsiveness, and collaboration in
their work (Lightburn & Kemp, 1994; Warren-Adamson, 2001). In
addition, the orientations, capacities, and resources of these organizations differ, as do the nature and quality of the activities they offer, the
extent to which they are perceived as welcoming and accessible, the
degree to which they are responsive to youth and community needs,
and the extent to which they work with other organizations to deliver
services (Halpern, 1999; McLaughlin, Irby, & Langman, 1994; Quinn,
1999). These characteristics of organizations are integral to the
provision, use, and impact of the programs and activities they provide
(Gootman, 2000; McLaughlin et al., 1994).
Because of this, it is often difcult to effectively describe the particular nature of the interventions that such organizations support
their component parts, relevant processes, and the means-ends
assumptions or theories of change (Weiss, 1995) that guide them.
Further, the outcomes they seek to effect are often framed quite
broadly and at multiple levels, focusing on such targets as child wellbeing, youth development, family functioning, and community
capacity. Given the complexity and ambiguity of the inputs and the
breadth of the intended outcomes, understanding the impact that
such organizations may have can be difcult indeed. This is more than
a question of method. Such organizations often operate informed
by operating theories and causal assumptions that remain largely
implicit. In order to frame research that can provide evidence of the
outcomes to which such organizations may contribute, it is imperative
to understand the operating theories of change that drive their
practice.
This paper provides a brief case-study analysis of one particular
example of community-based practice in an effort to begin to tease
out its inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes. It begins with some
background information on the organization and the community in
which it works, and then provides a very brief overview of the kinds of
programs and activities supported by the organization. It then turns to
a preliminary analysis of the operating principles and outcome
expectations that lie behind the organization's activities. Finally, it
frames a discussion of the issues surrounding linking inputs,
processes, and outcomes toward a theory of change that might be
useful in guiding evaluation of the work and effects of organizations
such as the one examined here.
The paper provides an exploratory, inductive analysis based on a
set of in-depth interviews with the key staff (management and the
lead staff for each programmatic area in which the organization
works) of one such organization in Chicago (the Southwest Youth
Collaborative), observations of program activities and the organizational environment in which they are provided, and a review of
center-produced documentation. Interviews were guided by a semistructured protocol which solicited open-ended responses to a set of
broad questions concerning the programs and activities provided by
the organization, perceptions of the neighborhood and the families
and young people with whom the organization works, the goals and
objectives of the organization and of its various program offerings, the
ways in which the organization is structured and functions, the
organization's relationships with the community, its members, and
other community organizations, and the perceived relationship
among these factors and the intended outcomes of the organization's
work. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed, and coded
for thematic analysis.
2. Organizational background and community context
The Southwest Youth Collaborative (SWYC) was founded in 1992
as part of a philanthropic initiative launched by a local philanthropy in
seven Chicago neighborhoods and one suburban community. The
mission of the organization is to work with youth to unleash their

potential to become successful and actively contributing members of

society. It does this through a broad range of activities and programs
and through collaboration with a set of community-based and citywide organizations and projects. Although it began with a socialservice and youth-development focus grounded in the provision of
various programs, the organization has increasingly developed a more
activist agenda and focuses a large portion of its work on community
organizing and advocacy with the intent to reform policies that have
an impact on young people.
At the time of eld work, the organization had 15 full-time and
about 8 part-time staff members, as well as a cadre of volunteers who
help support the organization's programming in a range of ways. It
maintains a set of ongoing organizational partnerships and interorganizational relations with other community organizations, and has
helped to incubate and support several such organizations, including a
number of social-justice organizations focused on immigrant rights
and human rights more broadly.
2.1. Neighborhood characteristics
The neighborhood in which the organization works is fairly large,
and comprises a cluster of community areas located on the western
edge of Chicago's mid-south region. The area is composed of a total of
49 census tracts within ve community areas1 and is home to a
population of nearly 200,000 people in all. It is an ethnically diverse
population that includes high proportions of African Americans,
Latinos, whites, and immigrant groups (including a relatively large
number of Arab Americans), though their concentrations tend to be
clustered in different community areas within the neighborhood.
There is also diversity with regard to a number of other compositional
factors, including income, education, employment, and residential
stability, though overall the area is relatively poor, with only the two
smallest community areas having poverty rates below 10% and
housing residents earning above the median household income for
the city as a whole, which was $38,625 in 2000 (see Table 1).
2.2. Community dynamics and social problems
A number of the circumstances presented by the community
context have clear relevance for the youth and families with whom the
organization works, and they inform how the organization engages
with this population. Many of these circumstances are connected with
poverty. In the words of one staff member:
You have families that are working two or three jobs to be able to
provide for their families, and you know, the difculty then
becomes then who is helping this young person develop at home?
The basic issue of poverty is related to and further complicated by a
number of other factors. One such factor is the educational barriers
faced by young people in the neighborhood, exemplied by overcrowded, under-resourced public schools, and by the limitations of
families to help support the education of their children due to
language barriers or their own literacy problems. Another factor is the
signicant and increasing diversity of the neighborhood and the

1
Community Areas were dened in the 1930s by University of Chicago sociologist
Ernest Burgess based on social surveys of city residents. The community identity
provided by the mapping of community areas over time became widely adopted, and
subsequent study suggested that they retained symbolic relevance, though they were
recognized as one among several ways of identifying areas of the city among other
kinds of neighborhood names and denitions (Hunter, 1974; Venkatesh 2001). Today,
census data are routinely aggregated to provide proles of community areas in the
Chicago Area Fact Book (Chicago Fact Book Consortium 2004), and the 77 dened
community areas are often used as proxies for Chicago communities by scholars,
government, and community organizations.

R.J. Chaskin / Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

Table 1
Southwest side by community area selected characteristics.

Population
% White
% Black
% Hispanic
% Asian
Med. hshld. income
% Poverty
% Single-female
headed family hshlds
Education (age 25+)
% HS graduate +
% some college +
% bachelors degree +
Employment
Mgmt/professional
Svc/sales/ofce
Residential stability
(same house in 1995)

West
Elsdon

Gage
Park

Chicago
Lawn

West
Lawn

W. Englewood

15,921
66.56
0.59
49.46
0.87
$ 45,310
6.9
17.7

39,193
47.45
7.30
79.30
0.52
$ 36,463
19.0
19.2

61,412
23.64
52.99
35.06
0.69
$ 35,983
19.8
38.3

29,235
62.85
2.77
51.92
0.98
$ 47,017
7.4
18.4

45,282
0.61
98.12
1.01
0.07
$ 26,693
32.1
54.1

61.8
28.7
9.1

46.0
20.7
5.8

65.3
35.4
9.4

65.5
34.6
11.4

62.8
31.3
4.8

17.4
43.9
58.2

11.8
38.6
55.5

16.4
49.4
55.6

19.9
43.3
55.8

17.4
58.3
67.6

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Summary File 1:
June 2001.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Summary File 3: August
2002.
Chicago Community Area aggregations prepared by: Chicago Area Geographic Information
Study (CAGIS) under contract to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.

concomitant effects of discrimination, isolation, and challenges to

social cohesion that such diversity may bring. A third factor is the level
of street violence and gang activity, and the complexity of multiple
gang boundaries that constrain young people's access to opportunities. Related to this, a fourth factor is the effects of a general policy
response to young people that fosters a trend toward what informants
describe as the criminalization of youth from these neighborhoods.
Finally, the prevalence of problems such as substance abuse and
domestic violence were cited as additional factors that are important
to understand in order to respond to the needs of young people and
their families in the community.
The young people and families with whom SWYC works are largely
self-selected, having learned about the organization's programs by
word of mouth in their schools and from those who are already
involved. Participants tend to come from the middle to poorer part of
the continuum of disadvantagedisadvantaged, but not necessarily
the most disadvantaged families in the community.
3. Programs and activities
The organization takes a two-track approach in addressing the
needs and supporting the development of youth and the functioning
of families in the community. One track focuses on youth development; the other on community involvement and organizing. In
addition, staff also attempt to respond to the informal support needs
of young people and their families as they arise.
Youth development programs include a range of different projects,
including tutoring and homework help, after-school recreational
programs, summer programs, cultural awareness programs, and arts
programs.2 They also include programs, particularly focused on older
youth (roughly ages 1422), the goals of which are to enhance young
people's capacities to plan, problem-solve, and work together, and to
provide them with both specic life-skills and expose them to
information about opportunities that can prepare them to move into
the workforce or move onto further education. They do this through a
broad range of workshops, courses, guest speakers, tours and eld
2
Staff also provides family-support services to those connected with the organization (particularly for parents of younger children) such as parent training activities,
parentteacher conference support, and connections to counseling resources and other
social service supports.

1129

trips, and internships, as well as through multifaceted programs that

engage youth in activities and connect them to other community
organizations and actions.3
Community involvement activities engage young people in organizing for social change and can focus on a range of different social
problems. The particular problems around which the young people
are mobilized are selected by the young people themselves who,
with older youth and staff serving in facilitating roles, take on the
range of responsibilities necessary to conduct a successful mobilization campaign. This includes analyzing the problem, conducting power analyses, canvassing, organizing events, participating in hearings
and public actions, and working with the media. For example, one
campaign sought to increase the City's budget allocations for programs supporting youth development and employment in Chicago;
another targeted school discipline policies; a third focused on preventing the loss of summer jobs for youth in the city; and a fourth on
broader issues of racial justice (especially connected with police brutality and racial proling) and immigrant rights.
In addition to these formal activities and programs, the organization provides a range of informal supports to young people and their
families. In part, this includes attempts to identify and help bolster
existing informal support networks that are available to the youth and
families with which the organization works. A staff member describes
one example of this:
If we know that one mother lives a block or two from another
mother, we try to help parents to communicate among themselves. So that one of the parents can help the other and make sure
that her kids get to school on time.
But in many ways the informal support roles that SWYC take on
entail staff stepping in to provide informal supportmoney, advice,
mediationdirectly. In the words of one staff member:
A lot of the families are very poor and disconnected, whose mother
was in prison, whose father was this, you know, they don't have a place
to turn so they turn to us. . . . Like if somebody, if a mother couldn't buy
her kid shoes for graduation, you know, before I used to give it to the
kid but now I ask the parent so they can buy it with dignity. Like when
they can't make their rent. We've all been there, and sometimes we
need somebody. So we try and gure out a way to do this.
Similarly, staff will sometimes play informal mediating roles between
families and institutions like the school, especially when families are
relatively new to the city and where language and cultural barriers may
make interaction with the schools difcult, or where particular young
people are having trouble staying organized and getting their homework
done. For example, as one staff member describes:
I'll put a paper in [the teacher's] mailbox so that they can write
down directly the homework for certain kids that we're having a
difcult time with. That way, if I have to, I'll take their homework
to them the following day.
In these cases, staff responds to specic, emerging needs of the
children and families involved in their formal programs to provide
supplementary social support. The organization also provides a

3
One example of this is an arts program that works with young people through
their creative engagement in the artsfrom dance to mural art to gardeningand uses
art as a way to connect young people to their community and to engagement in
community-change activities. The program includes an emphasis on the history and
practice of urban arts and often engages youth in community service, such as grafti
remediation (e.g., replacing gang-related tagging with public murals). The program
grew up out of the activist activities of youth working with the organization, and
represents an explicit programmatic link between the youth development and
community involvement work of the organization.

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R.J. Chaskin / Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

general context for such supportfor both individuals and groupsby

virtue of the space it provides for community members to drop in, for
community groups to meet, and for other community organizations to
conduct their business and run programs.
4. Operating principles and assumptions
Behind the provision of these programs, activities, and interactions are
some fundamental (often implicitly held) assumptions about young
people, youth development, and the needs of disadvantaged children and
families and how best to support them. To understand the relationship
between organizational behavior and program provision, on the one hand,
and expected short- and long-term outcomes, on the other, it is useful to
attempt to tease out the operating principles and relevant assumptions
that drive the work of the organization.
Toward this end, two fundamental aspects of SWYC's work are
worth highlighting: (1) a focus on youth engagement and participation as fundamental to youth development and social change and
(2) an organizational culture that seeks to support and reect the
valuation of youth as autonomous, responsible social actors.
4.1. Youth development and youth engagement
SWYC operates under a fundamental assumption about how to work
with young people: that they are to be respected as individuals, valued for
their opinions, and relied on to shape and play a central role in the
activities and programs that involve them. Central to this, in the words of
one staff member, is that youth have a voice. That they are the leaders. We
shouldn't really be guiding them. We're there to assist. This orientation is
consistent with the central tenets promoted by advocates of positive
youth development and reects ndings of recent research regarding
some of the characteristics of effective youth programs (Eccles & Gootman,
2002; McLaughlin et al., 1994; Pittman, 1991), as well as the central
arguments of a growing body of work focused on youth activism and civic
engagement (e.g., Checkoway & Gutirrez, 2006; Yates & Youniss, 1999).
To foster this kind of leadership and responsiveness, the organization
conducts periodic surveys of youth, it asks young people at monthly
meetings associated with different programs what they want and where
they want to see the program heading, and it involves them in decisionmaking about both program content (such as the focus of instruction or
the target of a social-action campaign) and organizational direction
(through the representation of young people on the organization's board
of directors). This approach is not always simple; there are tensions
associated with it, such as between young people's interests and needs, or
between responsibility and exploitation. As one staff member put it:
You want to deal with these kids with respect and you want to treat
them [with respect] because they have been mistreated . [So] they
must be represented at the table and that works in the long run. It will
work, they will come around. It's very hard and kids also see through,
they take advantage of it too because they can manipulate.
The emphasis on youth participation and engagement incorporates at least three principles of action: that participation be
developmental, that it be holistic, and that it recognize young people
as agents of change in their own right.
The developmental aspect of youth participation concerns both
engaging young people at the level they are ready to engage and
providing escalating opportunities for involvement by moving young
people through different programs and, in some cases, later hiring
them as staff. As one staff member put it:
We're trying to gear them to that as far as developing leadership
skills and some of the life skills they need to be involved in other
programs at the [organization]. There they get to go out on
conferences. For organizing, you need to know how to speak well

and write. So that affects our programming because we need to

have that in place.
SWYC's approach to participation is also holistic, in that young
people are provided with opportunities to participate in any number
of programs, over time or all at once. More centrally, the idea of holism
has to do with the need for staff to understand the broader context
and circumstances of the young people they work with. This means
understanding the needs of young people and the opportunities and
constraints placed on them, for example, by their individual
characteristics (e.g., learning disabilities, history of abuse), by their
family situations (e.g., multiple needs, immigrant status, poverty), and
by the dynamics of the community (e.g., violence, gangs, racism).
Finally and perhaps most centrally, the organization's approach to
participation is founded on the belief in young people as agents of
change. In the words of one staff member:
We see young people as critical to changing the way our
communitythe current state of our community. So I think that's
what differentiates us from a lot of other organizations and even
community-based organizations. There are several communitybased organizations in the city that will say our problem is gangs
and we need more police. And for us, the solution is not more
police but really getting at the root causes of why young people
join gangs. And we really seek and invite young people to join us
at the table to nd a solution to say, You are part of this
community. You are not the enemy here.
This stance is an explicit challenge to what several staff discussed
as the problem of the criminalization of youththe tendency for
society, through such instruments as its laws, media portrayals, and
school policies to characterize young people as problems to be
controlled rather than citizens in the making. It is also where SWYC's
dual focus on youth development (building the skills and capacities of
individual young people) and community development (building
community capacity to address the needs and redress the inequalities
faced by members of the community in which the organization
works) come together. Through young people's engagement as change
agents in their community, the organization seeks, in the words of one
staff member, to develop a base of grassroots leaders that can actively
either organize or actively participate in some way to shape or form or
change the way things are happening in the community.
4.2. Organizational culture and process
The participation and engagement of young people as autonomous,
responsible social actors takes place within, and is fostered by, an
organizational culture that seeks to embody these values and orientations. This includes creating an organizational environment that
provides safe space, a context of trust, and a sense of ownership. In
part, this is a question of consciously seeking to provide a contrast to the
other institutional contexts in which young people nd themselves. As
one staff member put it:
Some of the kids we work with, they're so afraid of authority and
they're afraid of institutions. Either they've had some type of
relationship with [Child Protective Services] or something . . . so
there's this big wall and so it takes time to penetrate that wall.
The organization thus seeks to create a more informal, nonhierarchical, improvisational space for young people to come and work
together, hang out, and develop positive relationshipsthough their
collective engagement in specic work projectswith both adults and
other youth. This effort is reected in both the physical space and in the
organization's structure and management processes. The building, for
example, in which the organization is housed is a reclaimed, single-story

R.J. Chaskin / Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

building on a main thoroughfare in the community, easily accessible and

easily recognizable, as its entire exterior surface (and many of the interior
walls and doors) is covered with colorful grafti-art murals. As one staff
member commented:

1131

So that's been a big plus that we have someone to go to instead of

calling the police.

5. Goals and expectations

That's their space and they feel comfortable enough to tag. I know
that some adults in the building don't like it but you need to
realize that it's not gangs, it's art.
The organizational structure reects a similarly informal approach:
management and oversight is relatively non-hierarchical, administration
is organized through the work of leadership teams, and there
is signicant informal communication among staff working on different
programs and activities. On the negative side, this mode of operation
sometimes makes it difcult for quick decisions to be made and
contributes to what one staff member described (not without pleasure)
as a chaotic environment. On the positive side, however, this approach
contributes to what most seem to view as an environment that is
generative, responsive, and alive.
Beyond the physical and organizational structure, the values embodied in the organization's approach get played out through interactions between staff and young people in particular situations and around
particular issues. This is not without its dilemmas, however. Indeed, staff
members of different backgrounds bring with them different orientations with regard to appropriate behavior and staffyouth interaction,
and different approaches to the youth-development agenda. One staff
member describes this difference as being more theory driven among
those staff who come from more educated, afuent backgrounds, and
more about tough love among those who come from backgrounds
similar to the young people with whom they work. Another denes the
difference between staff with a traditional social-service background
and those with a more community background. Regardless of the
source, the dilemmas are quite real, and play out in particular with
regard to issues of discipline. As one staff member put it: like when a
young person does something wrong, what do we do? So, do we kick
them out of the building? Do we call the parent rst? Do we give them a
warning? Or, in the words of another:
One of the staff said I should have a deadbolt on my door because
they keep breaking in but that's a value in terms of how do you want
to relate to the youth and to the community and how do you want to
build that community . Will you trust people and they trust you?
Finally, the ways in which the organization maintains relations with
other organizations is another aspect of the way the organization works
that reects, to an extent, its orientation toward young people as agents
of change and the organization's role in fostering social change. In part,
these relations are highly pragmatic and instrumental. For example,
SWYC works with social workers at different neighborhood schools, who
in turn refer youth to its programs. Similarly, it leverages the community
service-hours requirement that all students have in their schools as a
tool for outreach, going to the schools to tell young people about their
programs and to recruit them to apply their service hours to work as
organizers on particular social-change campaigns. In part, however, the
inter-organizational relationships are more organic, operating more
through the informal relations that staff has developed with youth in
their programs and through their inter-organizational collaborations.
One example is the partnership with an organization focused on putting
an end to gang violence. As one staff member explained:
We've had some of the high school volunteers even though
they've completed their [community-service] hours continue to
come and volunteer. Sometimes they've felt that they can let
whether me or another staff know that something is going to
happen within the neighborhood so that we can call . . . before
something happens so that they can intervene and try to avoid it.

The kinds of outcome goals that SWYC's programs, activities, and

approach to working with young people are meant to foster are varied,
often broadly stated, and operate at several different levels.
At the individual level (i.e., changes in the outcomes of particular
youth), outcome goals range from broad affective changes in young
people's self-concept, to the attainment of particular skills, to the
avoidance of risky behavior, to expectations for long-term benets
concerning educational attainment and citizenship. One staff member,
for example, talked about the desire to change young people's futureorientation and aspirations:
I would love for these kids to see that they can go on to achieve things
through education. Because a lot of these kids, they don't think that
there's anything past tomorrow. So they don't see longer-term, [that]
they need to get good grades so they can go to a decent high school
and then go to college. They don't make those connections.
Others talked about improving young people's self-condence, their
ability to make choices, and the choices they make. Still others focused on
behaviornot doing drugs, not joining a gang, getting good gradesand
on learning both broad critical thinking skills and specic hard skills.
For example, on the organizing side, hard skills include the ability to
facilitate meetings, address the media, recruit other youth; for other
programs, such skills include computer literacy, reading and math skills,
mastery of artistic techniques (see Table 2).
There are also outcome expectations for families with whom the
organization works, especially through its work with younger children.
These largely concern developing leadership skills among parents and
increasing their capacity to address their individual problems and to
work collectively toward community change (see Table 3).
Goals at both individual and family levels are also connected with
outcome goals for change at the community and policy levels (see
Table 4). In the words of one staff member:
Our efforts have been to, number one, serve this community in
terms of the services that we provide and, number two, to
organize this community so that as we move forward on various
policy issues, that they will understand the impact it's having on
them so that they'll become stronger advocates.
Advocacy focuses on issues that confront the community in which
SWYC works. Thus, it targets issues like education reform, racial proling,
school policies around discipline, school counseling support, and the like.
Building on the grassroots leaders the organization develops, it seeks to
promote concrete institutional and community change:
So our goal is to change different institutions that are in our
community. The main one in our community has been the public
school system but now it's broadened to have the Chicago Police
Department, Chicago Public Schools, there are people looking at
the Chicago Park District, and I think it's, you know, it's been
changing the way these institutions deal with young people. It's
changing the balance of power.

6. Linking input, process, and expected outcome: Toward a theory

of change
Having explored the programs, principles, goals, and outcome
expectations that characterize SWYC's work within the context of the

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Table 2
Inputs and outcome expectations level 1 individual (youth).
Goals
Develop leadership skills
Create opportunities

Heighten aspirations,
future orientation

Inputs

Outcomes

Education programs
College-oriented programs (trips to
colleges, scholarships, nancial
aid and application assistance)
Civic education activities
(discussion, eld trips, meetings
w/other groups)
Recreation programs
Youth development programs
(various substantive foci)
Provision of information
Safe sex
Job opportunities
Provision of safe space
Youth participation in decisionmaking, program direction

Short-term

Mid-term

Long-term

Reading/writing skills (remedial)

Making connections between school
achievement and future success
Alternatives to the street

Higher SAT/Iowa test scores

Higher self-esteem
Transition to other programs
(Gen Y; SOUL)
Personal efcacy, social skills,
leadership

School completion
Higher educational
attainment (college)

Hard skills and knowledge

development
Technology
Employment prep

Self control

Health and life choices

Sense of ownership, belonging

Ability to set goals

Youth to become active

and productive citizens
Empowerment and
political will
Reduction in negative
behaviors

Self discipline
Ability to engage in
teamwork
Ability to transfer skills to other settings

Teenage pregnancy
Crime
Gang involvement

Table 3
Inputs and outcome expectations level 2 family.
Outcomes
Goals

Inputs

Short-term

Mid-term

Long-term

Develop leadership skills

Team building exercises, meetings,

connect individual parents to one
another as needed
Parent training (health, parent
child relations, discipline)
Parent training (leadership
development, labor and
immigrant rights)
Mediation between parents
and children
Mediation and advocacy between
child or parent and school
Instrumental assistance (money,
connections to resources)

Positive interaction, comfort,

trust among parents
Better parenting skills
(communication, involvement
in school)
Problem-solving around specic
issues (e.g., school attendance, drug use)

Mutual assistance among parents

Parent involvement in
community (e.g., LSC)
Improved family dynamics
and support

Greater community capacity

Equity, political power

community in which it works, it becomes possible to begin to link

inputs, processes, and outcome expectations toward an operating
theory of change, though some presumed links are clearer than others.
Fundamentally, SWYC seeks to create opportunities for young people.
Their engagement in these opportunitiesformal programs, civic
engagement, organizational governanceis seen to promote the
possibility that they will have different kinds of life patterns, because
it can foster changes at different levels: in the individual young people
who participate, in the families they rely on and help support, and in

the community more broadly, including the policies that affect and the
institutions that work with young people (see Fig. 1).
Certain presumed trajectories, beginning with specic inputs
toward specic outcomes, are clearer than others. For example,
engaging young people in particular tasks associated with organizing
campaigns helps them develop particular hard skills (e.g., how to
recruit, how to run a meeting, how to work with the media), which
leads to interim process goals (e.g., a mobilized constituency,
negotiation with target institutions), which in turn leads to some

Table 4
Inputs and outcome expectations level 3 community.
Goals
Accepting differences,
supporting diversity
Social justice, community
change, equity
Developing grass-roots leaders
Change balance of power

Inputs
Youth studying social movements
of different ethnic groups
(Black Panthers, Zapatistas)
Youth organizing projects
Criminalization of youth
Reproductive rights
and health
Police brutality
Immigrant rights
Community participation in
SWYC governance

Outcomes
Short-term

Mid-term

Long-term

Organizing skills
Organization
Mobilization
Communication
Media
Civic engagement of
young people
Youth development
outcomes
Self-condence
Develop cohorts of
volunteers and activists

Political education and

analysis skills
Supportive relationships
among youth
Supportive relationships
w/families and between
youth and families
Education reform
Zero tolerance policies
More counselors in
high schools
Law enforcement reform
Racial proling
Brutality
Restorative justice

Youth to become active and

productive citizens and
leaders in their community
Educational outcomes
Higher graduation rates
Access to higher education
Less tracking into criminal
justice system
Racial equity
Immigrant rights
Community self-sufciency,
community capacity and
community inuence

R.J. Chaskin / Children and Youth Services Review 31 (2009) 11271134

1133

Fig. 1. A preliminary operating theory-of-change model.

kind of proximate social change (e.g., revision of school discipline

policies) and to an enduring capacity of those youth involved to
foster change in the future (i.e., by transferring the skills learned to
other settings and issues). This trajectory in effect is seen to lead to
a cadre of effective, engaged citizens, thus strengthening the communities in which they live and supporting a healthy democratic
system. The organization thus sees itself, in a sense, as a version of
Tocqueville's schools for democracy (Tocqueville, 1988: 63); by engaging young people in associational action they learn to become
effective citizens.
It is possible to posit similar trajectories for other aspects of the
organization's work, but playing these out to ultimate desired ends
requires caution given the small-scale nature of the intervention,
especially relative to some of the broadest goals. In addition, crafting
simple causal links between inputs and outcomes (proximate and
distal, at different levels) is complicated by the nuances and
uncertainty of process. There is an essential, qualitative aspect to the
inputs the organization provides. Much of what SWYC does, for
example, relies on softer inputs than the particular programs or
activities it sponsors: creating space (literally and guratively: safe
space to convene and hang out, space that is theirs, space, in the
words of one staff member, to be youth, to ask questions); creating
time and opportunities for an organic development of interest that
leads to knowledge and skills; and creating relationshipsbetween
staff and young people, between young people and other adults, and
among young people, parents, and community members. As one staff
member describes it:
Young people that come to the program have to more than say
yeah, this is a cool place to hang out. I think it's important for
them to say, I'm able to approach this person, I'm able to tell
them: this is happening at home. This is, you know, a problem that
I have and I need your help. And I think at the same time we need
to at one point or another say, Okay, who wrote on all of the
chairs? You know, let's talk about that. Who's holding them
accountable? Because I think that we will do them an injustice if
we don't do both.
To understand outcomesthe impacts that the work of organizations like this one have on the youth and families with which they
workit is therefore necessary to attend to the qualitative aspects of
the inputs, and to the mediating factors (e.g., community context,
organizational structure and dynamics, broader dynamics of change)
that condition the interaction among input, process, and outcome.
7. Conclusion
This preliminary analysis has begun to map the posited relationship between certain inputs and short-, medium-, and long-term
outcome expectations for one particular organization. It has also
begun to tease out some of the dimensions of practicea particular
approach to youth participation, characteristics of organizational

culture and operation, a set of driving values about young people, the
nature of relationships developed, and the nature and quality of young
people's engagement in the work of the organizationthat mediate
between input and outcome in this case. Given the broad diffusion of
community organizations as nodes of community practice and the
broad take-up of the basic conceptual assumptions and principles of
practice that guide their work in the U.S. and cross-nationally, there
may be much to learn from critical, systematic comparisons of such
practice and its likely effects. Such comparisons may help both to
clarifydescribe, compare, and distill like and divergent assumptions
and practice in different contextsthe complexity and ambiguity of
these kinds of interventions and to establish appropriate expectations
for interim effects and the broader, longer-term outcomes sought by
them.
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