Positive Youth Development

Positive Youth Development (PYD) is a developmental approach where organisations working with children and youth focus on promoting healthy and positive development. PYD emphasises that development involves mutually influential relations between individuals and their social environments.

PYD’s framework focuses on Five C’s: Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring/Compassion, to ultimately achieve a Sixth C: Contribution to self, family, community and to the institutions of a civil society.Effective youth engagement is not about “fixing” behaviour. It is about building and nurturing young people’s capacity to act effectively in education, social settings and future employment, developing the beliefs, behaviours, knowledge, attributes and skills that support healthy, productive adolescence and adulthood.

Based on almost three decades of developmental science, the Five Cs Model of PYD is one of the most commonly accepted theories of PYD today. The model focuses on the positive characteristics that enable adolescents to lead productive and healthy lives and contribute to the world in ways that benefit themselves, their families and communities, and civil society.