A170: Designing Healing-Centered Programs for Youth

How do we build programs that don’t just serve youth—but heal, inspire, and liberate them? This course is a laboratory for designing programs that center youth voices, build cultural belonging, and promote individual and collective healing. Students will draw from restorative practices, Black and Indigenous wisdom, positive youth development, and systems thinking to co-create youth programs that are transformative—not just transactional.

This course challenges students to move beyond trauma-informed care and into the radical terrain of healing-centered engagement—an approach rooted in love, culture, joy, and justice. Grounded in the work of Dr. Shawn Ginwright, this hands-on course invites students to critically examine the systems that harm youth while building bold alternatives that nurture their wholeness.

Through real-world case studies, co-design labs, and community dialogue, students will develop the tools to create culturally-responsive, strengths-based youth programs that are deeply rooted in wellbeing, identity, purpose, and social change. Whether working in education, public health, youth organizing, or social work, participants will leave this course equipped to design programs that center not what's wrong with young people—but what's right with them.