Thriving Together Leadership Initiative (CDAD, 2024)

Context

A coalition of youth organizers and community development advocates in Detroit sought to design a leadership development experience that felt culturally relevant, empowering, and action-driven for high school students.

Challenge

Previous youth engagement efforts in the city lacked student-led input, felt extractive, and didn’t connect to meaningful action. The goal was to center youth voice in every stage of program design and to produce a replicable framework for citywide leadership work.

Our Role

(Beebe Arts LLC)

  • Designed and facilitated a participatory design sprint with 12 youth from June - December 2024

  • Created custom surveys, focus group protocols, and decision-making frameworks

  • Co-led ideation, planning, and implementation of a two-day youth conference

  • Synthesized learnings into an internal toolkit for CDAD + public-facing documentation

Results

  • Over 50 youth participants attended the Thriving Together Leadership Event

  • 100% of surveyed students reported feeling more confident in their leadership potential

  • Toolkit from this program is now informing new youth leadership policy at 2 city organizations

  • The project was featured in the Detroit Free Press as a model for youth-led design

  • Lessons & Leverage

    We learned that structure amplifies—not limits—youth creativity. Building rituals for reflection and decision-making gave students more power, not less. This project now serves as a template we’re adapting for other communities and themes (e.g., climate, tech, entrepreneurship).