Building Rapport with Youth Community Leaders Webinar

Working on the ground, alongside community leaders requires certain professional and human sensibilities. These include highly sophisticated negotiation skills that lead to building meaningful rapport. This is especially important in contexts such as Medellin, Colombia, where youth have a long history of distrusting and resisting politicians, NGO representatives, and even academics.

Dr. Beth Fisher-Yoshida and Joan C. Lopez of the Youth, Peace, and Security Program (YPS) at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4) have developed a fieldwork method that is sensitive to the historical, cultural, and political dynamics that are at play in contexts with high degrees of conflict. Their methods seek to generate collaborative initiatives that address systemic problems affecting the youth. Central to their approach is building transparent and respectful relationships and working in collaboration and co-creation instead of following the classic top-down approach.

This webinar will address some of the obstacles that we as outsiders face while trying to work with communities, the ethical and practical implications therein, and how to overcome them.