2026 CDS Annual Conference

Discover how to engage youth most impacted by disparities as community architects. This hands-on workshop demonstrates proven community mapping strategies that achieved measurable results—including 13% improvements in health disparities & developing $5 Million worth of amenities. You'll practice facilitation techniques that authentically center youth voice, engage in experiential learning on youth-generated placemaking tools, and develop intergenerational action plans addressing root causes rather than symptoms. Leave with a replicable toolkit for building communities where young people design the conditions to thrive. This experience will have you eager to implement it in your community immediately! 


This workshop embodies "navigating change together" by repositioning young people from passengers to co-navigators charting the course. A key indicator of community health is youth health—we show you with experiential learning how to use local data to engage youth and adults by centering youth voices and mobilizing change to develop thriving communities. 


Traditional approaches respond to youth & community crises reactively, like redirecting a current after it's caused damage. This workshop demonstrates how community mapping paired with results-driven frameworks and authentic youth engagement create proactive currents of change. Young people most impacted by disparities partner with community leaders (who act as listeners and historians). Youth dig into disparities and root causes, design solutions, create maps and together we build intergenerational partnerships where youth and adults thrive. 


Sustainable community change requires bridging generational divides, centering those closest to challenges, and creating structures where youth voice translates directly into thriving places, policies, and practices. Participants experience shared navigation tools—revealing assets, identifying equity gaps, and building collective ownership of solutions. 


Results demonstrate what's possible using the framework. In Frazee, Minnesota (population 1,300) over five years: 13% improvement in youth mental wellness, documented reductions in health disparity gaps, 370% increase in local volunteerism, significant economic growth, $7 million leveraged for community investment, and sustainable intergenerational partnerships.  


This workshop includes practical tools for shifting community development currents—where demographic changes, increasing disparities, and calls for equity demand authentic power-sharing with young people inheriting the communities we're building today. 


Activities: Participants implement the DREAMM Framework using results-based community mapping exercises with youth disparity data, working in intergenerational teams to translate insights into actionable program, placemaking, and policy recommendations. 
Learning Outcomes: 

• Apply the DREAMM Framework to identify root causes and prioritize community-driven solutions
• Facilitate youth engagement that builds sustainable power rather than extracts stories
• Translate intergenerational-generated data into placemaking, funding and policy strategies
• Design intergenerational partnerships that are sustainable
• Implement measurement tools & learn to use the data to leverage investors

Toolkit Includes: DREAMM framework, community mapping templates, fundraising framework, and partnership agreements ready to adapt for your community. 

Bridging Divides through Skill Development, Education, and Inclusive Community Building: The Case of Built Africa This academic paper explores Built Africa’s efforts in bridging the socio-economic divide between rural and urban communities in South Africa, focusing on education, skills development, and community engagement. It highlights the organization's impact on empowering marginalized youth and women through vocational training, conflict resolution, and inclusive community building.

     Though the origins of U.S. community development practice are contested, the 1960s and 70s are universally accepted as an important era for the institutionalization of the field. While community development integrated aspects of this era—grassroots empowerment, local participation, and a focus on community assets—much of the more radical elements of the time never took root. As such, this paper revisits the Marxist roots of cultural and political movements of the era to understand the utility of Marxist Theories—traditional Marxism, neo-Marxism, Marxist geography, and racial capitalism—for community development research and practice. Based on my work as a scholar-practitioner in housing, this paper illuminates how Marxist concepts and theories—such as alienation, real community, the intelligentsia, right to the city, and more—push community development researchers and practitioners to think more deeply about the systemic nature of urban and rural challenges, the path toward equitable, democratic, and sustainable change, and their own role in that change.